Concert and Discussion panel on the life and works of the Spanish composer Joaquín Rodrigo, with Walter A. Clark (UC Riverside), Isabel Perez Dobarro, Antoni Pizà (Foundation for Iberian Music), Douglas Riva, Javier Suárez-Pajares (Universidad Complutense), and special guest Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of Joaquín Rodrigo (founder of Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo and Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo). The panel aims to give a comprehensive picture of Rodrigo´s genius, presenting both renowned and lesser-known works, Rodrigo´s context and influence, and his impact in the United States, among other topics.

Introduced by Antoni Pizà, Department of Music, CUNY, and Director, Foundation for Iberian Music at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation of The Graduate Center (CUNY).

Special guest: Cecilia Rodrigo, daughter of Joaquín Rodrigo

There will be a performance by mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna and guitarist Federico Díaz.

Reception to follow.

Participants:

Cecilia Rodrigo-Kamhi, Marquise of the Gardens of Aranjuez, President of the Fundación Victoria y Joaquín Rodrigo.

The only child of Victoria and Joaquín Rodrigo, dedicated to classical ballet from childhood, Cecilia directed a ballet school from 1967 to 1987 in Brussels. She is married to Agustín León Ara, renowned violinist. In 1989 she founded the publishing house Ediciones Joaquín Rodrigo for the purpose of publishing, safeguarding and promoting her father’s works, receiving in 1999 and again in 2006 the prize for best publisher of classical music awarded by the Spanish Authors Society and the Spanish Society of Artists and Performers.

Cecilia was President of the Association of Spanish Publishers of Symphonic Music from 1999 to 2002. The Victoria and Joaquín Rodrigo Foundation, created in 2000 and presided by Cecilia, has launched a series of projects, offering prizes in different international competitions for performance and research on Joaquín Rodrigo, and facilitating computerized access to the wealth of documentation in the Foundation’s Archives. Making use of this invaluable legacy, the Foundation carries out an important cultural task that includes the organization of exhibitions and the participation in activities related to the figure and music of Rodrigo, such as conferences, publications and more.

The Victoria and Joaquín Rodrigo Foundation received the Avon Prize 2003 in Japan, given to a non-profit institution for its’ special support to young performers. Cecilia is often invited to attend different international events to give an intimate approach to the life and work of both her parents.

Javier Suárez-Pajares, Universidad Complutense de Madrid, visiting scholar at the Brooks Center.

Musicology Professor at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He studied guitar, art history, and musicology at the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid, the Universidad Complutense and the Universidad de Oviedo. He completed his Ph.D. in 1994 with the dissertation “La música en la Catedral de Sigüenza, 1600-1750.” Since 1995, he has been teaching at the UCM. Suárez-Pajares has also taught courses at the Escuela Nacional de Música (Montevideo), Universidade Estadual Paulista (São Paulo) and the Universidad Nacional Autónoma (México), and between 2007 and 2012 was Principal Fellow-Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne. He has collaborated in the Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana and he is the co-author of the Diccionario de la Zarzuela. España e Hispanoamérica, published by Cambridge and Oxford UP. He also contributed to The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, the last edition of Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, and the Historia de la música en España e Hispanoamérica del Fondo de Cultura Económica. He is the President of the Spanish Guitar Society and director of the Roseta magazine. In 2016 he received a Fulbright Scholarship to research on the Spanish musicians in the United States during the Cold War and in 2018 he was awarded another Fulbright Scholarship to study Spanish musicians in the East Coast in the first half of the nineteenth century. He is currently researching on the guitar and its repertoire, the Spanish music of the first half of the twentieth century, and he is finishing a book on composer Joaquín Rodrigo with Walter Clark, which will be published by Norton in 2020. He is a Visiting Scholar at the Brooks Center.

Walter Aaron Clark, Distinguished Professor in Musicology at the University of California

Walter Aaron Clark received his doctorate in musicology from UCLA in 1992, where he wrote his dissertation under the guidance of the renowned Hispanist Robert M. Stevenson. He is now Distinguished Professor of Musicology at the University of California, Riverside, where he teaches a wide variety of courses on Spanish and Latin American music and is the founder/director of UCR’s Center for Iberian and Latin American Music. He was the founding editor (2005-16) of Oxford University Press’s award-winning series Currents in Latin American and Iberian Music, and he is now editor-in-chief of the peer-reviewed online journal Diagonal: An Ibero-American Music Review. He is the author of groundbreaking Oxford biographies of Isaac Albéniz, Enrique Granados, and Federico Moreno Torroba (with William Krause). His latest book is Los Romeros: Royal Family of the Spanish Guitar, published by University of Illinois Press. His critical editions for Tritó Edicions of Granados’s Catalan stage works Follet, Picarol, and Gaziel have facilitated revivals and recordings of those fascinating but largely forgotten works. He has just co-edited (with Ana Benavides) the catalogue for an exhibition entitled El Paisaje Acústico de Joaquín Rodrigo, organized by the Biblioteca Nacional de España in Madrid and opening on May 24, 2019, to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the composer’s death. He is currently conducting research on a co-authored biography of Rodrigo (with Javier Suárez-Pajares) for W. W. Norton; an annotated bio-bibliography of Rodrigo for the online Oxford Bibliographies in Music series; and co-editing (with Álvaro Torrente) The Cambridge History of Music in Spain. He is the recipient of Fulbright and NEH grants, and in June 2016, King Felipe VI of Spain conferred on him the title of Comendador de la Orden de Isabel la Católica, a Spanish knighthood, in recognition of his contributions to the promotion of Spanish music and culture.

Douglas Riva, pianist.

American pianist Douglas Riva has gained international recognition for his profound knowledge of Spanish music and no less an authority than the distinguished Spanish composer Xavier Montsalvatge has described him as an exceptional pianist. Douglas Riva’s interpretations of the works of Enrique Granados have earned him his reputation as today’s leading exponent of Granados’ piano music. His recordings for Naxos of the complete piano works of Granados, comprising 231 works including 102 World Premiere recordings, have won worldwide critical acclaim. Douglas Riva is the Assistant Director of the eighteen-volume critical edition of the Complete Works for Piano of Enrique Granados, directed by Alicia de Larrocha and published by Editorial Boileau, Barcelona. In November, 2016 the Complutense University, Madrid, published his critical edition of the complete orchestral works by Granados, including the first publication of 8 works. Mr. Riva recorded one of these works, Elisenda, with the City of Granada Orchestra, directed by Cristóbal Soler, for Deutsche Grammophon. Mr. Riva has performed at the White House, Carnegie Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall and numerous festivals in Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Holland, and the United States. He gave the first American performance of a newly discovered Scarlatti sonata at the National Gallery of Art, Washington and the world première of Gazebo Dances by John Corigliano. Granados’s long-lost masterpiece Cant de les estrelles for piano solo, organ and choruses was performed for only the second time in history by Douglas Riva and the Voices of Ascension, directed by Dennis Keene in 2007. The Naxos recording of the première performance, Song of the Stars, was nominated for a GRAMMY award.

Moderator:

Isabel Pérez Dobarro, pianist, Ph.D. candidate at NYU.

Isabel Pérez Dobarro has appeared in solo recitals and chamber music concerts at the Stern Auditorium, Zankel Hall, and Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Steinway Hall, Japan Society, Academy of Arts and Letters, Tenri Cultural Institute, Yamaha Center, DiMenna Center, Liederkranz Foundation, Rachmaninoff Hall at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Sala Manuel de Falla, Ateneo de Madrid, and Sala Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli in Bolzano, Italy. She was a prizewinner at the American Protegé International Piano and Strings Competition (2nd Prize), Grand Prize Virtuoso International Competition (3rd Prize), Ciutat de Berga International Competition (1st Prize) and the Cidade do Fundao Piano International Competition (1st Prize), as well as the recipient of the Jorge Bolet Distinguished Performer Award at the Stony Brook International Piano Festival. She has performed at the Mannes Contemporary Music Institute and the New England Conservatory Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance and Practice, the Festival Internacional de Segovia, Música en Compostela, and Gijón Piano Festival, among others.

She recently performed at the Concert for a Sustainable Planet at Carnegie Hall along with cellist Yo-Yo Ma and members of the New York Philharmonic. In January 2018, she was a soloist with the Real Filharmonia de Galicia Orchestra under the baton of maestro Diego Masson. Isabel has taught masterclasses at the Manuel Peleteiro Conservatory and the New York University´s Undergraduate Collegium. She has also given lectures and speeches at the Nobel Peace Prize Forum, United Nations General Assembly, ECOSOC Youth Forum, European Parliament within the European Arts Forum, I Jornadas Sostenibilidad e Instituciones Culturales, University of Michigan, IE University in Madrid, University of Vechta, Columbia University, Carnegie Hall, and Casina Pio IV at the Vatican. She has participated in Música en Compostela, Gijon International Piano Festival, and the Summer Institute for Contemporary Performance and Prac ce at the New England Conservatory, among other festivals. In 2016, she organized the Festival Granados: Composer, Pedagogue, and Virtuoso at New York University, a series of lectures and concerts about Enrique Granados in which she premiered a newly reconstructed version for piano quintet of Granados´ Concierto Patético by composer Sergi Casanelles.

With mezzo-soprano Anna Tonna, Isabel was awarded the 2016 New York Women Composers Seed Grant for their project Mujeres en Música, an initiative that promotes music composed by women in the United States and Spain. The project consists of two concerts per year (one at the Lincoln Center in New York and one at the International Institute in Madrid) in which they present music composed and performed by women. In addition to her concertizing career, Isabel leads the project UNSDSN-Youth Arts Twenty Thirty which combines arts with sustainability in the promotion of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Isabel Pérez Dobarro is a Ph.D. candidate at NYU Steinhardt, where she started teaching as an Adjunct Instructor at age 19. She holds a Professional Studies degree from the Manhattan School of Music, a master’s degree from NYU Steinhardt and a bachelor’s degree from the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música de Madrid. Isabel is a member of the Executive Board of the Piano Teachers Congress of New York and co-chair of its Honors Program. She is the UN Focal point at the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network Youth, President of the Beta Pi Chapter at the International Honors Society in Education Kappa Delta Pi, and the Western European Representative of the Fair Air Coalition. She is also part of the UNWTO Honorary Committee for the Conference “The Way of Saint James and the SDGs,” along with their Majesties the King and Queen of Spain, the Prince of Liechtenstein, among others. She obtained a J.D. in law from UNED and has completed courses in U.S Law and Methodologies courses at NYU SPS and the SDG Academy. She has completed the Harvard Business CoreX Certificate at Harvard University and the High-Impact Leadership Course at the University of Cambridge.

She has been selected as one of the most influential Galicians by the newspaper “El Correo Gallego.”

Antoni Pizà

Antoni Pizà is the Director of the Foundation for Iberian Music at the Barry S. Brook Center for Music Research and Documentation of The Graduate Center (CUNY). He has taught music history at Hofstra University (Long Island, N.Y.), The City College, John Jay College of The City University of New York, and the Conservatori Superior de Música i Dança de les Illes Balears. A member of the editorial board of Music in Art, Catalan Review, Papeles de música de Cádiz, and Itamar, his interests include Spanish and Latin American music as well as biographical studies and criticism. He is the author of numerous books and articles, including Antoni Literes: Introducció a la seva obra *Palma de Mallorca: Edicions Documenta Balear, 2002) and Francesc Guerau i el seu temps (Palma: Documenta, 2014 [2000]).

Federico Díaz


Born in Mendoza, Argentina, Federico Díaz is an upcoming versatile musician of the new generation of guitarists with a multi-faceted career as a performing artist, arranger and composer in the Classical and Argentinian music worlds. His performances have taken him to distinguished festivals and concert halls across the US, Europe and Latin America. He has appeared as soloist with the National University of Cuyo Symphony Orchestra, Mozarteum University Chamber Orchestra, Polish Chamber Orchestra Sopot, Sinfonieorchester Magdeburg, Forth Worth Symphony Orchestra, among others. His passion for chamber music lead him to collaborate with musicians such as Lionel Cottet, Philippe Quint, Daniel Binelli, Juan Falú, Fernando Otero, Jeremías Serigiani, Nora Buschmann, Emilio Argento, Nicolás Giordano, Rodrigo Bauzá, Federico Nathan, Bruno Cavallaro, Matías González, JP Jofre, Pablo Woiz, Juan Emilio Cucchiarelli, and a variety of string ensembles. The label Epsa Music released in 2014 the album “Perspectiva 204” of the duo DiaZ-WoiZ. In 2013 he did the premiere recording of “Divertimento on Austrian Folk Songs” by Bernhard Romberg with Lionel Cottet for Sony Classical. As a member of Emilio Teubal Trio, he recorded the album “Memorias de otro tiempo” that was recently released. Federico studied at world-known institutions such as National University of Cuyo, the University Mozarteum Salzburg, Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler, and Manhattan School of Music. His former teachers include Cristina Cuitiño, Eliot Fisk, Ricardo Gallén and David Starobin. Currently, he is pursuing a Doctor´s Degree in Performance, at the Graduate Center of City University of New York, under the guidance of Frederic Hand.

Anna Tonna

Mezzo Soprano Anna Tonna has been described as mezzo heroine who knows how to sing Rossini by the Rossini Gessellschaft and as showing off her warm, secure mezzo-soprano to maximum advantage by the New York Magazine; accolades such as these explain her constant demand as a recitalist and opera singer in both Europe and the Americas. The combination of a highly developed coloratura with a full, balanced, flexible lower register have guaranteed her acclaim as a lyric mezzo, both in familiar roles Rosina, Carmen, Dorabella, as well as in more rare repertoire by Paisiello, Vivaldi, Mascagni, Zandonai and Giordano.

Additionally, Ms. Tonna’s passion for and excellence in the recital genre have garnered her increasing acclaim in both the U.S. and Europe, particularly her path breaking explorations of the repertoire of composers from Spain and Latin America. Ms. Tonna’s recitals are a source of constant expectation and excitement in New York City, where she has performed at both the Alice Tully Hall and Rose Center of Lincoln Center, Bargemusic, Merkin Hall, New York’s Town Hall, Weill Recital Hall. The same excitement greets her appearances in Spain, with performances at the Auditorio Nacional de España and the Escorial Theatre in Spain.

She has collaborated with Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, Festival Iberoamericano de las Artes in Puerto Rico, Música de Cámara, Festival de Segovia, Joy in Singing, Elysium Between Two Continents and the Nassau Music Festival among others. Of note amongst the countless recital of songs are appearances at the Cosmo Club in Washington, D.C., a world premiere of a song cycle by Spanish composer Miquel Ortega with North South Consonance in Manhattan, and performances for the Asociación Rioja Lírica in Logroño (Spain), Atheneums of Madrid and Barcelona, Teatro Comica-Lírica de Madrid and two editions of the Otoño Cultural Iberoamericano of Huelva. Her recital of “Songs of post Civil War Spain” at the Fundación Juan March of Madrid was broadcast on Radio Television Española and hailed as “a tour de force” by the Spanish newspaper ABC.

Ms. Tonna’s artistry has been recognized by the Liederkranz Foundation, The Gerda Lissner Foundation, National Opera Association, BRIO (Bronx Recognizes Its Own) grant from the Bronx Council of the Arts, and a Fulbright Scholarship to conduct research in and perform Spanish Art Song in Spain, where she has established a thriving career. Commercial recordings that have preserved some of these efforts include The songs of Julio Gómez with pianist Jorge Robaina with disc label VERSO and her new disc España alla Rossini with Spanish pianist Emilio González Sanz which premiered in April of 2016 with iTinerant Classics. She bowed this past May 2017 in the role of Laura Adorno with the Brno State Opera in the Czech Republic, and bowed in 2016 in said role in Ponchielli’s La Gioconda and as Maddalena in Verdi’s Rigoletto, both with New Jersey Association of Verismo opera.

Her upcoming engagements 2017-2018 include the role of Clarina in Rossini’s Il cambiale di Matrimonio for Little Opera Zamora, recitals at Museo del Romanticismo (Madrid), a Zarzuela concert at the ElbPhilharmonie in Hamburg (Germany), Castelnuovo (Italy) the Hispanic Society Museum & Library (NYC), the Americas Society (NYC) and Bernstein’s Songfest for Maverick Concerts.

A native and resident of New York City, Ms. Tonna holds a B.A. in Music from Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida and a Masters in Performing Arts from the Mannes College of Music in New York City. www.annatonna.com