Great Review of the Fandango Conference We are pleased and grateful for the glowing review that the Center for Studies on 18th Century Spain (Centro Studi sul Settecento Spagnolo) of the University of Bologna has posted on last week’s fandango conference. They write that the 2 day conference was “excellently organized” by our tireless hosts, Antoni Pizà and Meira Goldberg, and that the conference was original and the overall experience was very positive. Read the full post here, in Spanish or Italian.
The Pronomos Flute and 2014 Composer’s Commission: Coming Soon to NY! We announced previously that the recipient of this year’s commission from the Foundation of Iberian Music is Javier Arias Bal, who will be writing a work for the special Pronomos flute. Julián Elvira, the flute’s inventor, spokesperson, and virtuoso performer, has issued a press statement about the upcoming concert. (Leer en español más abajo.) The Pronomos flute itself is a modified form of the modern flute, which dates back to the late 19th century design of Theobald Boehm. The Pronomos’ innovations allow a greater array of extended techniques, facilitating a fresh new body of work for flutists and a new concert experience for audiences. The 2014 Composer’s Commission concert, to be held June 22nd at the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater, will be the first time the Pronomos flute has been heard in New York. Elvira has assembled a program featuring works for the Pronomos by Spanish composers in New York—culminating, of course, in the premiere of Arias’ new work. This multi-media concert will feature the work of Julián Ávila, Eduardo Costa, Alexandra Gardner, Pedro Gómez, Alberto Posadas, Julián Elvira himself, and the Graduate Center’s own Ines Thiebaut, with specially created backing video projections. View the complete program here. (download PDF)
Video: Talks from Xenakis: Past, Present, and Future now available on Youtube 1 April 2015: Several of the talks given at the 2010 conference “Xenakis: Past, Present, and Future” are now available on the Xenakis Project of the Americas’ Youtube page. The conference was presented by the Xenakis Project of the Americas in conjunction with the Brooklyn Experimental Media Collective.
Catalan Music at the Oscars Although not up for nomination itself, music by a Catalan composer, Joan Valent, had a good year at the Academy Awards. Valent contributed two original theme songs to the soundtrack for this year’s Oscar darling Birdman. Birdman was nominated almost across the board and took the top honors of Best Picture, Best Directing, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Cinematography. Not bad! The film’s original score, too, is a great moment in the spotlight for Latin composers, even if not Spanish. The score was recorded by Grammy award winning Mexican-American jazz dummer, Antonio Sanchez, who based his score on improvised material, to match the quirky, spontaneous character of the film. You can get Valent’s Birdman songs, “Birdman Blind” and “Bebirdman” on the original motion picture soundtrack in your preferred format. Sanchez’s OST is available separately.
World Premiere from Anna Cazurra Upcoming in NYC Anna Cazurra, who was awarded the Foundation for Iberian Music’s Composer Commission in 2007 (click to hear the concert), will give the world premiere of her latest work, Gran Tango, in New York City in June. Saturday, June 6th, 2015 at 3:00 p.m Broadway Presbyterian Church 114th Street and Broadway The work, Gran Tango, is for string orchestra, and will be performed under the direction of Laurine Celeste Fox, who has also worked with the Foundation on a previous Composer’s Commission concert. She is currently the executive directory of the Symphony of the City of New York. The program will include a selection of canonical Spanish works, such as Turina’s Rapsodia Sinfónica, the Preludio of Villa Lobos’ Bachianas Brasileiras No. 4. and selections from de Falla’s Siete Canciones Populares Españolas (which will be sung by soprano Amaya Arberas, accompanied by Martin Söderberg). We hope you will join us to celebrate new work and support our esteemed colleagues!
Free Gran Fandango Performance Concluding the first night of the upcoming fandango conference, we have a special treat! At 7 pm, April 17, in the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater, Radio Jarocho will perform a Gran Fandango. This performance is free and open to the public, so even if you are unable to join us for the conference paper sessions, please drop in for music and dance! Radio Jarocho is an acclaimed NYC-based band that specializes in their own modern twist on son jarocho. Check out this fandango performance from September 2012 at Washington DC’s Kennedy Center! (Click photo to go to video.)
Call for papers: “From Xenakis to the Present Day: The Continuum in Music and Architecture” 13 March 2015: Centre Iannis Xenakis, XPA’s sister foundation, announces a call for papers for “From Xenakis to the Present Day: The Continuum in Music and Architecture”, an international colloquium between France and Cyprus. The colloquium will be held 3-5 November, 2015, in France, and (provisionally) 25-29 May, 2016, in Cyprus. The colloquium will center around the concept of “continuum”. For more information, please see: http://www.centre-iannis-xenakis.org/continuum_uk.
Fandango Conference Saturday Venue & Party All interested attendees for our upcoming conference, “The Global Reach of the Fandango” (April 17-18), please be advised that there is a new venue for Saturday, the 18th. All papers on Saturday will now be hosted at Alegrias Theater at La Nacional (239 W. 14th St, between 7th and 8th Aves). (Friday papers are held at the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater.) This new larger venue gives us the opportunity for an exciting reception/after party! Alegrias is a theater specializing in flamenco, and all attendees are invited to remain after the conference for a film and live performance. The conference will conclude at 4 pm. After, Alegrias will show the Vicente Perez film Flamenco de Raiz, a documentary which traces the social history of flamenco from the streets to the renowned flamenco academy Amor de Dios. (Watch a trailer here!) Afterward, we hope you will stay for Alegrias’s weekly flamenco performance. Please note that the performance is held separately by the venue and has no official relation to the conference, so it will have a separate cover charge. The film and flamenco performance are open to the public, so any friends who are unable to attend the conference are welcome to join the evening’s festivities. (Please e-mail Meira Goldberg at fandangoconference.cuny@gmail.com to RSVP.)
Partnership with the Early Music Morella Festival The Foundation for Iberian Music is pleased to announce a new partnership with the Early Music Morella Festival for medieval and Renaissance music. The festival, which will be held July 19-23 in the medieval town of Morella, Castellón (Spain), was founded by the early music group Capella de Ministrers. The Capella recently presented a concert series here in NYC, co-sponsored by the Foundation for Iberian Music, in conjunction with the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s exhibit, “El Greco in New York.” The Capella and the Foundation have previously collaborated on several occasions to present concerts and workshops in New York. (click the photo to view the full festival poster/schedule) The festival offers courses with a stellar faculty in early music vocal and instrumental performance, as well as dance, in addition to a full schedule of concerts, lectures and other activities (which are free to all attending students). The Foundation and the Capella would like to encourage students to apply to the festival. Admission fees range from 150-200 € and accommodations are as low as 5 € a day. It’s a great opportunity to take advantage of the newly improved Euro exchange rate!
New Book on Flamenco K. Meira Goldberg, currently a visiting scholar at the Foundation for Iberian Music, has a new book on flamenco that is now available from McFarland! The book is called Flamenco on the Global Stage: Historical, Critical, and Theoretical Perspectives, and it is co-edited with Ninotchka Devorah Bennahum and Michelle Heffner Hayes. Flamenco on the Global Stage features a collection of new essays that address the popular narrative of flamenco’s history and challenge its stereotypes. Bennahum is an associate professor of dance at UC Santa Barbara. and she has previously collaborated with the Foundation in expert panel discussion on the flamenco in film (in conjunction with 100 Years of Flamenco in New York, an exhibit she co-curated with Goldberg) and Carlos Surinach’s work in modern dance. She is the author of two books on Wesleyan University Press, Carmen, a Gypsy Geography, and Antonia Mercé, “La Argentina:” Flamenco and the Spanish Avant Garde. Hayes is a professor of dance at the University of Kansas. She is the author of a previous book with McFarland, Flamenco: Conflicting Histories of the Dance, and has worked with or advocated for many national dance companies and initiatives, including commissioning new work from NYC’s Tango Mujer (an all female tango company). Goldberg, of course, is a visiting scholar and she teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and FIT. She is heading the organizing committee for the upcoming conference, “Spaniards, Indians, Africans and Gypsies: The Global Reach of the Fandango in Music, Song, and Dance,” to be held April 17-18 at the Graduate Center’s Segal Theater. Several of the book’s contributors will be presenting at this conference, including Claudia Jeschke, Nancy Heller, and Kiko Mora, John Mora, and Brook Zern, as well as Goldberg herself, so please come and say hello!