2017: Spaniards, Natives, Africans, and Gypsies: Transatlantic Malagueñas and Zapateados in Music, Song, and Dance The Foundation for Iberian Music is delighted to announce a west coast sequel to last year’s fandango conference, “Spaniards, Natives, Africans, and Gypsies: Transatlantic Malagueñas and Zapateados in Music, Song, and Dance.” This conference—which, as you can see, focuses on malagueñas and zapateados—will be held at University of California, Riverside, April 6 and 7, 2017. It is being co-sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music and UC’s own Center for Iberian and Latin American Music. The conference is accepting submissions until Dec 1! Read the full CFP here. Please e-mail K. Meira Goldberg with any questions at fandangoconference.cuny@gmail.com.
Spring Andalus Ensemble Concert, June 16! The New York Andalus Ensemble, a resident artist at the Foundation for Iberian Music, is having their spring concert next Thursday, June 16! The concert is at 7:00 at the Graduate Center’s Elebash Recital Hall. Tickets are $15.50 ($12 students/seniors). Reserve online or pay cash at the door. NYAE’s wonderful performances of new and old music from Al-Andalus frequently sell out, so be sure to come early. This time, there’s an added incentive: NYAE’s friend, Davis Baron Nahmias, will be holding a free tasting for his distillery, Nahmias et Fils. Nahmias et Fils is the only distillery in the US that produces mahia, a Moroccan spirit made from figs. Finally, the we’d like to congratulate the NYAE’s director, Samuel Thomas, on his recent invitation to lecture at the Library of Congress, while the Ensemble was in DC to perform at the Washington Jewish Music Festival. You can also watch a video of a past NYAE concert at that link (and there’s always more at the ensemble’s YouTube channel, as well as the Foundation’s).
The Art of Flamenco The Foundation for Iberian Music has co-organized an upcoming flamenco lecture and performance at the Clark Museum. The performance, which will be on Sunday, June 12 at 3 pm, features the great Belén Maya, who will be dancing along with guitarist José Luis Rodríguez. Maya is daughter of the internationally renowned flamenco dancer Mario Maya, and she has served as principal dancer of his New York based dance company, Mario Maya Flamenco. She represented the “new generation” of flamenco in Carlos Saura’s film Flamenco (1995). Rodríguez has been named as on of the 20 best flamenco guitarists in Spain (Felix Grande, Agenda Flamenca, 1995) and he has received numerous prizes for his playing. He is aksi co-founder of Nu Flamenco Collaborative, a US-based foundation dedicated to promoting all forms of flamenco. Tickets are $25 ($22 members).
Granados Celebration Coverage in Nuvol Digital Catalan magazine Nuvol has an article about Douglas Riva’s upcoming performance on April 29th at the Morgan Library and Museum, and about Granados’ time in New York and the Celebration at large. We are delighted to see the Foundation for Iberian Music’s many-time collaborator Benet Casablancas called “possibly the most important living Catalan composer” — “the Granados of the 21st century”! Incredible praise, with which we are inclined to agree. Riva’s upcoming performance is Friday, April 29th, at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $35 ($25 members). (click to download PDF)
Douglas Riva Solo Concert at the Morgan Library, Apr 29 Fans of romantic piano music will have one more opportunity this month to catch Douglas Riva performing Granados’ solo piano works, on April 29th, at the beautiful Morgan Library and Museum. Riva, for readers just joining us, is co-organizer of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s ongoing Granados centenary celebrations and one of the world’s foremost experts in the piano works of Granados. Don’t miss this chance to hear Granados as his music was meant to be heard. Program: Capricho español, DLR V:1 Cuentos de la juventud, DLR IV:2 Goyescas, DLR II:4 (select movements) Escenas románticas, DLR V:7 Barcarola, DLR V:4 Vals de concierto, DLR VII:9 Tickets are $35 ($25 members) 7:30 pm, Friday, April 29th The Morgan Library and Museum 225 Madison Ave (36th St) New York, NY 10016
Chamber Music of Granados at the Hispanic Society Next up in the docket for our continuing Granados Centennial festivities is a concert with Douglas Riva at the Hispanic Society of America, April 14th. Douglas will be performing selected chamber music of Enrique Granados with Erica Kiesewetter (violin) and Wolfram Koessel (cello). A reception will follow. Admission is free. Please RSVP at friends@hispanicsociety.org or 212-926 2234, Ext. 250. 6 pm, Thursday, April 14 Hispanic Society of America, Museum and Library Broadway between 155th and 156th Sts. (Photograph of Granados from the Hispanic Society collection.)
Miguel Roig-Francoli World Premiere, Apr 12 Spanish composer Miguel Roig-Francoli has an upcoming world premiere in NYC! Roig-Francoli was the recipient of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Composer’s Commission in 2010, for which he wrote Songs of the Infinite (premiered by Adam Kent and Jennifer Roig-Francoli at Carnegie Hall). Roig-Francoli has received many awards both for his composition and his teaching, and he has been described as a pioneer of postmodernism in Spanish music. His new work, Six Preludes after Chopin, will premiere at The Green Space on April 12, 2016, as a part of a solo recital by pianist Soyeon Kate Lee. Lee is a critically lauded pianist who has placed in several international piano competitions, including 1st place at the Juilliard Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition in 2001. Lee is also a student at our very own Graduate Center, pursuing a DMA in piano performance with Richard Goode and Ursula Oppens. Tickets are only $20 and available through the Concert Artist’s Guild. 7:30 pm, Tuesday, April 12 The Green Space 44 Charlton St New York, NY 10013
Electroacoustic Artists at the GC Instituto Cervantes has an ongoing installation by four sound artists, Miguel Álvarez-Fernández, Ferrer-Molina, Richard Garet, and María Chávez, through Saturday, April 9th. The exhibit, entitled Sound vs Sense: Intersection, explores the many facets of the relationship between sound and language and engages questions of how we hear/listen and form meaning. Álvarez-Fernández and Ferrer-Molina were guests at the CUNY Graduate Center’s Composers Forum on March 22, to discuss their work, which inhabits the margins between experimental music and sound art. It explores conceptual art, performance, experimental video and other possibilities for developing our relationship with sound. They engage with these questions of intersections through concert pieces, sound installations, sculptures, curatorial projects and many other manifestations. The artists have given a series of related talks while in town, including a discussion at NYU’s Waverly Labs on Spanish electroacoustic artists and a live performance at Instituto Cervantes of material related to the installation. (Click here to download the pamphlet for the Composers Forum.) About the artists: Miguel Álvarez-Fernández is a sound artist, musicologist, and theorist. He is a professor of music at European University of Madrid (UEM) and hosts the weekly program dedicated to experimental music Ars Sonora, on Radio Clásica/Radio Nacional de España. Ferrer-Molina is a Spanish sound artist and musicologist and the author of the upcoming book Heterodoxy of the Guitar: Taxonomy of New Artistic Practices. Richard Garet is a NYC-based sound artist whose work has been featured at MoMA and many international museums. Maria Chávez is a Peruvian sound artist and turntablist. She is currently a research fellow for the Sound Practice Research department at Goldsmith’s University of London and regularly presents workshops in the UK, Spain, the US, and beyond.
José Menor Performs Granados, International Tour Acclaimed pianist José Menor will perform the works of Granados at Carnegie Hall’s Weill Recital Hall on March 24th, as a part of the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Granados Celebration. Tickets are $25 (student and senior discounts available). This concert kicks off an international tour, so readers and Granados fans throughout the world will have many opportunities to hear Menor in the coming months. Dates include: May 7 – Beijing Arts Festival. This concert begins a tour of China and South Korea, through May 20th. June 8 – Festival Martha Argerich in Lugano, Switzerland November, 2016 – London, UK, performing Goyescas. (Date TBA; part of a Granados festival.) He also has a residency at Auditori Enric Granados in Lleida, Spain, Granados’s birthplace, and will be performing there regularly throughout 2016 and 2017. He began his residency in January of this year, with a performance of Goyescas. His next concert in Lleida will be May 29, with La Orquestra Simfònica Julià Carbonell. The program includes the first movement of the piano concerto, the suite Elisenda, and some Spanish dances. See the auditorium’s site for the full calendar.
Beyond Sorrow: Rethinking Flamenco for the 21st Century (Round table) NYU’s King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center (KJCC) will be hosting a round table discussion on flamenco on March 9th at 6:30 pm. The panel will include K. Meira Goldberg, a flamenco dancer and scholar who is a visiting scholar for the 2015-16 academic year at the Foundation for Iberian Music. Other participants include Marina Heredia (Flamenco Festival New York), Paloma McGregor (Angela’s Pulse, Dancing While Black), Josefina Saldaña-Portillo (NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis), and Sebastian Calderón Bentin (NYU Tisch School of the Arts). Description of the panel’s focus, from the KJCC’s website: Historically, flamenco artistry was generated as a dazzling, resistant response to the discrimination and poverty endured by the Roma of Spain and other marginalized communities in Andalusia. Today, flamenco is marked not only by its inheritance of loss and art but by the multiple forces of culture, diaspora, identity, politics, and market. This panel asks questions to reframe the life and futures of flamenco. We will consider how contemporary flamenco artists negotiate the fine line between embracing an artistic inheritance and breaking free of stereotype. Can flamenco survive in the fullness of its profound and deep expression without being boxed in by obligatory sorrow and suffering? What will the new sources of inspiration be for the generations of artists who have not known the suffering of their ancestors? How does flamenco’s evolution in the context of globalized 21st century culture reflect changing ideas about gender and race? How do today’s artists beat a path to the future, finding new and authentic creative impetus? This panel discussion is a part of Flamenco Festival NY. A reception will follow. 6:30 pm, March 9 King Juan Carlos I of Spain Center 53 Washington Square South New York, NY. USA 10012 Tel: (212) 998-3650