Workshop in Baroque Mexican Music with La Fontegara Another early music workshop has been added to our list of offerings coming up in October, in partnership with the New York Early Music Celebration. October 13, don’t miss the opportunity to learn more about early Colonial Mexican music with La Fontegara. 10 am to 1 pm, in Elebash Recital Hall. La Fontegara is a Mexican ensemble dedicated to Renaissance, Baroque, and Gallant music of Colonial Mexico. They have performed extensively both in Mexico and internationally, as staples of the early music festival circuit. Click the photo below to watch their delightful performance of Baroque composer Dario Castello’s second sonata:
Welcome Greil Marcus to the 2015 Lloyd Old lecture! We are thrilled that the program for the upcoming annual Lloyd Old and Constance Old lecture, for Music in 21st Century Society, is growing quickly. Please welcome Greil Marcus to the program as the official respondent. Marcus is a noted music critic and journalist whose work focuses on American popular music and its place in society. He is the author of Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century and The Old, Weird America: The World of Bob Dylan’s Basement Tapes, and he has written for Rolling Stone, Creem, and The Village Voice. For the fall 2015 semester, he will be a visiting professor at the Graduate Center. The program will feature, as previously announced, a lecture by philosopher Roger Scruton on the legacies of tonality and atonality and their places among modern audiences. This lecture will be followed by a conversation with Greil Marcus, and the debate is sure to be a lively one. The program will also include a short musical interlude, by performers yet to be determined.
Date and Program of Music in 21st Century Society Lecture As previously announced, the speaker at this fall’s Lloyd Old and Constance Old Lecture—an annual series in which we invite speakers to discuss the evolving place of music in contemporary society—is notable philosopher Roger Scruton. We now have a confirmed date and a tentative program for this lecture. “No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny the voice” Ash Wednesday T. S. Eliot Walking Among Noise Tonality, Atonality, and Where We Go From Here Friday, October 16, 2015, 7:30pm Elebash Recital Hall The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave, New York NY 10016 Taking a cue from Eliot’s famous line, Walking among Noise: Tonality, Atonality, and Where We Go from Here will discuss the exceptional role of beauty, art and music in our everyday experience. The talk will address what tonality is and why it was declared a dead language. It asks, what are the lessons learned from the avant-garde, how can composers of “serious” music reconnect to the concert-going audience, why are symphony audiences declining, and finally, how can composers today connect with popular culture and the music that appeals to the young? The program will feature a musical interlude with members of the Perspectives Ensemble, who will be performing selections from works by Rochberg, Webern, and Tippett. Admission is free, but reservations are required. We will send out a community notice when reservations are open, about a month before the lecture. Please be sure to check back with us for updates.
Roger Scruton will speak at the 2015 Music in 21st-Century Society Lecture Music in 21st-Century Society, curated by Antoni Pizà of the Foundation for Iberian Music, is delighted to announce that the speaker for this year’s Lloyd Old and Constance Old lecture will be distinguished British philosopher, Roger Scruton. Prof. Scruton is a writer, philosopher and public commentator. He has specialized in aesthetics with particular attention to music and architecture. He engages in contemporary political and cultural debates from the standpoint of a conservative thinker and is well known as a powerful polemicist. He has written widely in the press on political and cultural issues. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature and a fellow of the British Academy. Scruton graduated from Cambridge University in 1965, spent two years abroad and then pursued an academic career in philosophy, first in Cambridge, and then in London, until 1990 when he took a year’s leave of absence to work for an educational charity in Czechoslovakia. (This charity grew from the ‘underground university’ which colleagues and Scruton had established in the last decade of communism. His contacts with the countries of the old Eastern Bloc remain strong.) Scruton then taught part-time at Boston University Massachusetts until the end of 1994, while simultaneously building a public affairs consultancy in Eastern Europe. Since then Scruton has been a free-lance writer and consultant. He is currently senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., where he is pursuing projects related to the need for a new urbanism and the cultural impact of neuroscience. In 1996, Scruton married his wife, Sophie, and they have two children, Sam, age 17, and Lucy, age 15. “There are few more valuable thinkers in Britain – or indeed, the world – today. His vilification and rejection by the academic establishment is disgraceful. In comparison with him, most of his critics are intellectual pygmies. Both left and right should be grateful to have such a man to sharpen and define the issues. And philosophers should be grateful that he has placed their subject at the very centre of current affairs. Perhaps Scruton’s greatest contribution is his living demonstration of the truth that without philosophy we are nothing.” Bryan Appleyard, The Sunday Times
Surinach series on Catalunya Radio Hi everyone! Don’t forget, Catalunya Radio’s program “Qui té por del segle XX?” is in the midst of a month-long series celebrating the centennial of Carlos Surinach. The Foundation for Iberian Music’s director, Antoni Pizà, is on board as the series’ expert consultant and as a participant in the broadcasts. Episode 1 (June 7) features a lengthy interview with Pizà, and you can listen to it here. The remaining broadcasts offer a survey of Surinach’s work, including his collaborations with the Martha Graham Dance Company. Last week’s broadcast (June 14) is available in the program’s archive, and you can hear the remaining broadcasts Sunday nights in June, live online—or catch up later with the archive, at the link above, or in the Foundation’s own audio archive.
Tembembe with Viol Player Jordi Savall Mexican early and folk music ensemble Tembembe Ensamble Continuo will be appearing in the upcoming New York Early Music Celebration in October, with a performance workshop at the Graduate Center. We previously announced a workshop with Musica Temprana on October 16 and we are pleased to announce an additional workshop with Tembembe, sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music, on October 14 in room C197 at the Graduate Center (10 am – 1 pm). Readers in the New England area can catch Tembembe next week as a part of the Boston Early Music Festival. They will be performing in a concert featuring Grammy award-winning ensemble Hespérion XXI, under the direction of the renowned Jordi Savall, who will be playing viola da gamba. The concert is on June 8 at 8 pm, at the New England Conservatory’s Jordan Hall. Click here for tickets.
Granados Centenary: New Board Member and Publication News The Granados Centenary steering committee is delighted to welcome Luisa Morales to the conference advisory board. Luisa Morales is a Spanish keyboardist and scholar who is internationally recognised as one of the most outstanding performers on Spanish keyboard music. As founder of FIMTE, she has developed a pioneering task presenting, yearly, recent advances in Spanish keyboard music scholarship. She has published numerous books and papers in various innovative fields of research and regularly gives concerts, lectures and teaches courses on topics covering different aspects of Spanish music and dance. Mrs. Morales has performed around the world in several venues and festivals including Harmoniques-Lausanne (Stein vis-à-vis combined instrument, 1777), St. Cecilia’s Hall-Georgian Society, Edinburgh (harpsichord Falkener, 1773), National Music Museum (Vermillion USA, harpsichord Kirckman, 1798), American Instrument Society (harpsichord Calisto, 1780), Goya’s Encounters (UCLA University Riverside), Duke University, Ballarat Festival (Victoria, Australia), Melbourne Recital Hall, Sydney University, Utrecht Oude Muziek, FIMTE Almería, Toronto, Barcelona, Costa Rica, Chili, Mexico, Rabat, Tánger, etc. Upcoming engagements include Toronto, Melbourne (Recital Hall and Melba Hall), and Bogotá. She is contributor to the New Grove’s Dictionary of Musical Instruments (Oxford University Press), the New Haydn Encyclopedia (Cambridge University Press) and has been reviewer of the series Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music (Oxford University Press). Luisa is a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Secondly, we are excited to announce that Editorial Boileau (Barcelona) has several forthcoming publications in conjunction with the centenary—including a piano score app for iPad! First, there is a Spanish translation of Enrique Granados: Poet of the Piano, by Walter Aaron Clark. This will be a newly revised edition of the two prior editions published by Oxford University Press. Second, Ed. Boileau will be issuing the first ever publication of the Complete Correspondence of Enrique Granados, prepared by Miriam Perandones. This will be an essential source of new information about Granados and the basis for future research into his life and works. Lastly, Ed. Boileau has also created an app for iPad with the 254 piano works by Granados that are included in the Complete Piano Works of Enrique Granados (directed by Alicia de Larrocha and Douglas Riva). This app (coming soon to the App Store) will make individual scores of the complete works available instantly throughout the world.
More Benet Casablancas Premieres Benet Casablancas is having a busy year, and the Foundation is happy to announce yet another upcoming premiere! This summer will be the North American premiere of his Festival Overture at the Colorado Music Festival, which will also include a performance of his symphonic arrangement of his 2012 commission, Song, Dance, and Celebration. This will be the first time the Overture has been heard outside of Spain! The new orchestration of Song, Dance, and Celebration premiered earlier this year in Toronto. The score for Festival Overture is also available now from Music Sales Classical.
Early Music Workshop with Musica Temprana in October As organization partner and participant of Early Music Foundation’s citywide “New York Early Music Celebration 2015: El Nuevo Mundo,” the Foundation for Iberian Music is most pleased to host a lecture/workshop conducted by the Netherlands-based ensemble Musica Temprana. The workshop will be a great opportunity for CUNY’s graduate student body, scholars with particular interests in Hispanic culture, local early music aficionados, connoisseurs, and amateurs, as well as a diverse cross-section of Celebration (festival) attendees. The subject of Musica Temprana’s workshop will be background research and the application of historically informed performance practices, relating to Musica Temprana’s upcoming concert program, presented by Music Before 1800 as a part of the NY Early Music Celebration festival. The concert will be October 18, 2015. (Details below.) The workshop itself is October 16, 10 am -1 pm, at the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater. Musica Temprana’s concert program, “Bailes, Tonadas & Cachuas,” features 18th century songs and dances ‘from the streets’ from Trujillo, Peru. A recording of these works, from the Codex Trujillo, is available from Cobra Records. Workshop: October 16, 2015 10 am – 1 pm The Segal Theater The Graduate Center, CUNY 365 Fifth Ave New York, NY 10016 Concert: October 18, 2015 time TBA Corpus Christi Church 529 W. 121st Street New York, NY 10027
Antoni Pizà on Catalunya Radio in June Our fearless director here at the Foundation for Iberian Music, Antoni Pizà, will be appearing in June on Catalunya Radio‘s program “Who’s Afraid of the 20th Century?” (Qui té por del segle XX?), so mark your calendars! The program airs Sundays, 11 am – 12 pm, and Pizà will be appearing each Sunday in June in celebration of Carlos Surinach’s centennial. For those of you not in Spain, the program will be broadcast live online and will also be available later in the program’s podcast archive.