(courtesy of Taylor Mallory)

“Why not put food and entertainment all under one bun?” Taylor Mallory asks, reciting the slogan of his new food and music webshow, “Music Burger.” Wearing a smart sport jacket and his signature black baseball cap backwards, Mallory doesn’t look stressed, but the musician and teacher has a lot on his plate.

Having just graduated from Columbia College, he teaches an after-school class in music production at a South Side high school, works at a music production company, entertains at corporate events, is a wedding singer, and produces “Music Burger” episodes each week. The webshow was a “spontaneous creative idea” that came to Mallory as a way to promote Chicago musicians and bring people to his personal website through a food and music web series. Episodes of the show include a performance by a musical guest and Mallory teaching one simple recipe. The guests and the food are always related: Mallory says, “You think of going out to a nice restaurant and you think of a specific kind of music, like classical music, and then for a barbecue maybe you think of soul, or folk music.” He tries to do the same thing with “Music Burger”—in the most recent episode Mallory invited in an action-packed band, ENDISKIZE, and taught viewers how to make a protein shake. The project was originally entitled “I like food and people,” but that name was scrapped. Mallory explains why, leaning back in his chair, looking spaced out, and saying slowly, “I didn’t want to sound like a hippie.”

Three other Columbia College students work with Mallory on “Music Burger,” and the end result of their collaboration is near-professional quality web episodes. Additional help and advice comes from Ivan Dupee of Dupee Productions, whom Mallory describes simply as “a blessing.” The group is hoping the project will lead to distribution on major channels in the future, which would allow them to expand to other cities and provide exposure for even more artists. For now, musicians featured on “Music Burger” have come from the South and West Sides of Chicago, as well as the suburbs.

While “Music Burger” is a lot of work, Mallory says it all comes together in moments like the one in the J Gridges episode, when he was standing in his kitchen and watching the band play and felt “this can really be something.” He loves to see the musicians he features talking up “Music Burger” on their own sites, and is proud to say that the project surprises people he meets. The drive behind his work comes from his conviction that the music industry lacks creativity, and he wants to push forward the “craft” of making music. And there’s another reason. “If it puts a smile on your face, then do it,” Mallory says.

The same belief that people should pursue what they enjoy runs through Mallory’s class in music production at Hirsch Metropolitan High School in Grand Crossing, the neighborhood just south of Woodlawn. He calls his teaching “organic,” responding to his own and students’ interests. Mallory moves on quickly from talking about this job, adding that he works in client relations for Dupee Productions and has various weekend gigs. He chuckles and says, “I know you’re thinking, ‘That’s a lot.’”

But Mallory never misses a beat, even asking for a publicity shot of himself with your reporter to hype this article. “Music Burger” has been picked up by Blip TV, a resource for video bloggers, and with Mallory at the helm more publicity is inevitable.

(courtesy of David Moss)

David Moss is a self-described “extreme vocalist.” In his bizarre, entrancing performances, he babbles and sings in invented languages, his commanding but playful use of his voice leaving audiences speechless. This Saturday, at the University of Chicago’s Bond Chapel, Moss will premiere his latest composition, “Hyperglyphyx.”

The composition focuses on “a rhythm that drives the human genetic package,” Moss says. Trained as a percussionist and self-taught as a singer, Moss is interested in finding ”a pulse, a beat, a chant buried” deep in human memories and “chemical hieroglyphics.” It is what cannot be expressed in grammar alone that excites Moss. To find these hidden beats and pulses, he uses warped excerpts from texts selected partly for their content, “and sometimes for the rhythm and color of their language,” he says. He cites three diverse authors. “[Italo] Calvino, the Italian writer, has attracted me tremendously because of his imagery about time and memory and physical location and philosophy of places…Melville, especially in ‘Moby-Dick,’ represents this kind of incantational power of speaking and writing through repetition and exaggeration and onomatopoeia—it’s almost like chanting. [Franz] Kafka lies between the two, dealing with narrative puzzles and mysteries.“ The excerpts are critical in Moss’s improvisations. “I like to know that I have someone’s beautiful words in front of me that I can jump into and use as material to start something new again.”

Moss’s Saturday performance is part of the “Praxes of Theory” conference, a two-day international colloquium that explores the relationship between aesthetic theory and performance practice in a variety of disciplines. Appropriately, the colloquium is being hosted by the University’s Germanic Studies, Theater and Performing Studies, and Cinema & Media Studies departments, along with the Renaissance Society. Artists and scholars will discuss a variety of formal papers and conceptual performances, including Moss’s vocals.

“Hyperglyphyx” and a history of unique, titillating performances have kept Moss’s name in discussions of the avant-garde. One of his current projects is the improvisational trio Denseland, formed in February of 2008 to investigate “being compact, earthy, and massive.” To the novice listener, Denseland sounds a bit like the lovechild of Tom Waits and a washing machine. But somehow the trio’s music really does sound earthy—it suspends listeners in an alternate world of sounds that creep, crawl, scrape, and slink.

This ability to activate instruments and his voice into something that seems to move has earned Moss significant critical praise. He was a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1991 and a DAAD Fellowship (Berlin) in 1992, and in 2005 he was a soloist in the opening concerts of both the Venice Biennale and the Queensland Biennial Music Festival. In 2001, with funding from the Belgian government, Moss founded the Institute for Living Voice, which offers workshops, concerts, and discussions focused on singing.

When Moss comes to town on Saturday, it will be no surprise if his audience is awestruck. He will likely turn Bond Chapel into a playground for his voice to take flight. Or to sink, swim, swoon, or skate.
Bond Chapel, 1050 E. 59th St. May 22. Saturday, 8pm. Free. renaissancesociety.org

“Voices of the Middle Eastern City” was performed on May 14th at the University of Chicago as part of the 25th annual Middle Eastern History and Theory Conference. The symposium attracted scholars from such varied institutions as the University of Melbourne, Columbia University, and Turkey’s Bilkent University. The assembly hall of the International House was filled with these intellectuals and others who chose to spend last Friday evening listening to the sounds of the Middle East.

The University of Chicago’s Middle East Music Ensemble took the stage next, parading their collection of bendirs, ouds, and santours alongside violins, recorders, and clarinets. Students, professors, and others jubilantly strummed and hammered and bowed away at their respective instruments. Men got up one by one to sing as the performance moved through classical Arabian songs, old Iranian folk tunes, and Andalusian poetry put to music.

From the outset, “Voices of the Middle Eastern City” spoke to the plurality of the word “voices.” Throughout the performance reverberated echoes of Jewish, Persian, Turkish, and Sufi traditions, to name a few. With each bedtime tale read aloud, each personal thought jotted down in a journal 200 years ago that was again invoked on stage, each folk tune being sung for the umpteenth time, the understanding deepened: there is no singular Middle Eastern perspective.

(Sarah Mendelsohn)

If you’re entertaining thoughts of coming to the University of Chicago’s annual Summer Breeze festivities, you may have noticed that, in addition to the main stage performers—Nas, Damian “Junior Gong” Marley, and the Dirty Projectors—there’s a separate event organized by the University’s radio station, WHPK 88.5 FM. The following is a guide—written by station DJs —to the various groups and solo acts performing at WHPK’s free stage, which will be located on the University’s main quadrangles near the intersection of 58th Street and University Avenue.

WHPK DJs on the Other Summer Breeze

Eric and the Happy Thoughts
Do you remember July of 1969? Cruising the strip in your dad’s ‘stang with the top down, pulling your shaggy hair out of your face so you could scope out chicks on the boardwalk? These Indiana pretty boys do. Classic garage jingle jams and summer punk: Eric and the Happy Thoughts are a velveteen time train to warmer days. If the love-son of Joey Ramone and Alex Chilton and the love-daughter of Caetano Veloso and Brian Wilson were to have their own children, those kids would grow up to be Eric and the Happy Thoughts. Throw logic out the window, grab your shorts and Vans, and order yourself a pizza in the middle of class—Eric and the Happy Thoughts will not fail to turn your frowns upside-down. (Alec Mitrovich)

Pants Yell!
Pants Yell! has perfectly realized the disarming impact of the teen anthem written for the day you wake up and you understand that you’re 21 years old, and that life moves in small, modest ways. Andrew Churchman’s songs touch somewhere between the understated, stately pop of groups like the Go-Betweens and the Cat’s Miaow and the rampant joy of Another Sunny Day’s “Anorak City.” The band’s records, from their earliest cassette to their latest and final LP, on the legendary American pop label Slumberland Records (whose bands—the Aislers Set, Cause Co-Motion!—have graced the Summer Breeze stage in past years), encapsulate the heart of sincere guitar pop, growing ever more sophisticated as the early twenties roll on. Pants Yell! was the band of my teenage years, the living pop ideal, and no other group even came close. Summer Breeze will be the band’s first and last appearance in Chicago, as they will play their final show in Boston on May 24th. (Eric Hanss)

Electric Bunnies
These Miami psych-garage rockers evoke images of teenage puppet shows performed in front of a swathe of angsty and darling bop-stars. Their 2009 LP, “Through the Magical Door” (Florida’s Dying), runs the gamut of punk and post-punk modalities while transcending into poppy cutesiness through electric organs, harmonies, and tambourines. Negotiating the divide in the contemporary garage scene between psych-happy janglecats like the Black Lips and Strange Boys, and grungeface killah’s à la Wizzard Sleeve, the Electric Bunnies inhabit a zone in which Pitchforkers and disdainers alike can commingle. (Alec Mitrovich)

James Ferraro
Premiering nostalgic tendencies from stratosphere reverberations, Ferraro destroys all conceptions of identity and historicity in contemporary culture. Twinkling new-age synths overlaying paranoid and sometimes sentimental samples transport the listener to 1970s Midwestern truck stops and outer-rim stations. Sometimes known as Edward Flex, Ferraro was part of the drone bands The Skaters and Lamborghini Crystal. Though each of his projects and LPs orchestrates its own unique environment and language, all carry traces of the Southern California composer’s tumescent brain idea. Expect loop-rich drones, lush keyboards, and a pleasurable assault on the listener’s senses. (Alec Mitrovich)

The Dreams
If Angelo Badalamenti had composed a soundtrack for a film about Dale Cooper’s evil doppelganger, he would have pre-empted the Dreams. These French glue-wave champs (the band includes members from the Anals, A.H. Kraken, and Crack und Ultra Eczema) blend anarcho-dub bangers with twangy, reverbed-out guitars and vocals in order to generate paranoid night terrors from the Black Lodge. Echoes of Public Image Ltd. inhabit the dark corners of the Dreams’ understated and hopeless odysseys, where fans of trance-inducing oblivion will not be disappointed. (Alec Mitrovich)

Teepee
Eric Lopez-Zarino, a.k.a. Teepee will burn this Summer Breeze into your nostalgia hub. Also from Florida, Teepee has released a number of cassettes and seven-inches, along with an LP, on numerous labels, including Florida’s Dying, Night People, and HoZac. Teepee’s set promises to end the WHPK stage’s events on a cozy note. Naïve and innocent waves of guitar loops and effected vocals meet to hold hands and synthesize teary-eyed smiles. Occasionally, a drum machine appears to encourage leg-bobbing, but even these moments are delightfully pure. An appropriate counter-balance to the afternoon’s moodier moments, Teepee’s Summer Breeze appearance will surely be one that you warmly recollected years in the future. (Alec Mitrovich)
University of Chicago Quads, near 1118 E. 58th St. May 15. Saturday, noon. All ages, Free. www.whpk.org

Shooting the Breeze

This year’s Summer Breeze concert will include a collaboration between the Major Activities Board and Fire Escape Films, the student filmmakers group on campus. Fire Escape members have been re-cutting their work over the past few weeks to provide visuals intended to accompany DJ OCD Automatic’s set during the festival.

UofC third-year Justin Staple, one of the current co-chairs of the organization and the mastermind behind this collaboration, describes the process of choosing what would be in the screening: “We’re compiling a bunch of the work that has come out this year from various filmmakers on campus and making one long, visually stimulating commercial to promote how much fun making movies can be and the vibrant community of filmmakers already around on campus. Expect something you might find late one night on MTV during the 80s.”

As ever, Fire Escape members are eager to screen their work for an audience. Member and UofC third-year Joey Brown says, “We’re extremely excited to gain access to the crowds that Summer Breeze draws. Hopefully we can use this event to show the campus what we can do.” (Rebecca Kilberg)

To think of the 1920s is to think of flapper girls, speakeasies, and hot, hot jazz. But for the folks at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute, the decade also recalls mummies, for these are the years that James Henry Breasted, famed Egyptologist and founder of the OI, trekked through Egypt and Mesopotamia in search of artifacts to exhibit in the fledgling museum. It seems natural, then, to pair the OI’s current exhibit, “Pioneers to the Past: American Archaeologists in the Middle East, 1919-1920,” with a bit of the hot stuff, as will happen when Eric Schneider’s Hot Dixieland Quartet performs there this Sunday afternoon.

Schneider is a South-Side-born, North-Side-raised jazz saxophonist. A self-proclaimed Luddite, he is difficult to interview. He only has one YouTube clip posted, but it’s impressive, testifying to his impeccable bebop skills. Bebop and Dixieland, though both are forms of jazz, bear only a distant resemblance to one another. Both rely heavily on improvisation, but where the former is typified by Charlie Parker-style rapidity and technical prowess, the latter is classified by its New Orleans roots, easy tempo, and ragtime and blues influences. “Giant Steps,” the famous John Coltrane recording, is an example of bebop; Dixieland is closer to “When The Saints Come Marching In.”

Dixieland and Chicago have a special history as well. Though the subgenre originated in New Orleans, it migrated to Chicago and New York via musicians, the most influential of whom was Louis Armstrong. Armstrong, widely regarded as a master of Dixieland music and a godfather of jazz, was brought to Chicago in 1922 by his mentor Joe “King” Oliver to play in his Creole Jazz Band. With his arrival in Chicago came the birth of Chicago-style Dixieland. Though over time Chicago jazz has moved away from these Dixieland roots—string bass instead of tuba, guitar instead of banjo— some distinguishing elements remain, especially the brassy melodic statements over which the rest of the ensemble improvises accompaniment. But for a jazz musician working in the present, after bebop, post-bop, and free jazz became the dominant jazz idioms, there remains a problem: how does a musician move between the two idioms while retaining a coherent sound?

Even for a musician as experienced as Schneider, it wasn’t easy. “During my formative years,” he says, “I would just try to play what fits. As soon as I heard Charlie Parker—and I didn’t know it then—but I would be playing Charlie Parker stuff over a Dixieland band. It sounded a bit off.”

His interest in the music grew, and with his new interest came an appreciation not only for the unique character of Dixieland, but for the elements that relate it to other forms of jazz. Though improvising over a Dixieland tune might require “less notes”, the melodic and lyrical standard that applies to all jazz solos also apply to Dixieland. As if to illustrate how jazz borrows from many different forms of music, he adds, “Just look at the bebop era. They based songs on the chord structures of the great American standards.”

Schneider has a lot to teach about the finer points of distinguishing jazz genres. “Benny Goodman was first a Dixieland player,” he says, referring to the big band king of clarinet, “and so was Sidney Bechet.” Bechet is yet another clarinetist (and saxophonist) crucial to the history of jazz, and your correspondent had thought he worked exclusively in swing. After Schneider’s correction, further listening and research suggested that Bechet was indeed a Dixieland musician at heart. “That’s a whole other story,” he said. “What’s Dixieland? What’s jazz?” This Sunday afternoon, listeners will be able to find out for themselves.
Oriental Institute Museum, 1155 E. 58th St. May 16. Sunday, 2pm. Free. 773-702-9507. oi.uchicago.edu

Pasted to the front door of Pilsen’s Casa Aztlán is a handwritten sign that reads, “Donation $15—if unemployed, $5.” Inside the performance space, Benito Juárez and Pancho Villa stare grimly from the mural that covers the walls. Their vibrantly rendered figures are barely visible in the darkened room—every few moments their faces appear from behind a dancing audience member or a community volunteer. The presence of two icons of Mexican progressivism in this makeshift ballroom is fitting: May Day, known as International Workers’ Day outside the United States, is a commemoration of the fight for the eight-hour workday and a reminder of the oppressive conditions that persist for many laborers. In collaboration with Portoluz and Rockotitlan, Casa Aztlán hosts the annual May Day Blast, which celebrates Pilsen’s rich culture while raising awareness of the conditions of migrant workers.

Tonight’s celebration is not a fundraiser for a wider philanthropic project; the donations, according to Portoluz director Marguerite Horberg, will cover the costs of the evening itself. She describes organizations like Portoluz and Casa Aztlán as “sanctuaries for progressive culture.” They are nonprofits with modest means and lofty goals: they aim to promote the arts in Chicago and to provide a space for what Horberg calls their “proclivities.” Proclivities seems to be a euphemism for politics, as made evident by the Zapatista soldier painted on the side of Casa Aztlán itself.

The May Day Blast includes performances by a host of musical ensembles, including Benjamin Anaya & Los Extraños Unidos and Los Vicios de Papa. The crowd consists mostly of well-meaning young adults sitting cross-legged in front of the stage, although a few older patrons dance unabashedly in the back of the room. Despite the leftist philosophy of the event’s organizers, the musical acts themselves are seemingly apolitical, and the drinks being sold at the back of the room suggest an entrepreneurial streak that contrasts with the revolutionary backdrop of the night’s festivities.

The apolitical nature of the musical acts doesn’t disturb Horberg. Portoluz’s mission is centered on the fusion of the political and the cultural, the artist and the activist. According to Chris Geovanis, a former organizer for Hothouse, Portoluz’s precursor, the separation between the realms of culture and politics is an artificial divide created by those she calls “the little capitalist monsters who call the shots.” As she sees it, venues like Casa Aztlán and nonprofits such as Portoluz are “a collective answer to the dearth of access to anything but mainstream pop culture.” But according to Geovanis, even this subversive approach to cultural activity has been corrupted by corporate interest. She believes that visionaries like Horberg remain relatively faithful to Portoluz’s original objective: to serve as “a standing expression of solidarity.”

Earnest patrons clap and shuffle enthusiastically about the room as the night progresses, leaving little room for sermonizing. Despite the serious theme of the event, it is primarily an opportunity for the community to come together and celebrate its often difficult history. As if to distill the spirit of the evening, Geovanis paraphrases the anarchist writer Emma Goldman: “I don’t want to be part of your revolution if I can’t dance.”

The headliner for the weekend is Elixir, with a guest dance set from Chicago natives the Cosmic Otters. The five-member band is based out of Vermont and includes its own caller (the person who tells the dancers the order of steps and figures). Each dance is a specific series of steps, and the caller and dancers run through them once or twice before the music starts. Once the rest of the band joins in and the couples begin dancing, the caller sings them through with phrases like, “four-hand star, three-quarters round, swing that girl, swing that boy.” Calling makes contra dance accessible to beginners, telling them what they should be doing at each point in the dance. Three out of the four dances offered this weekend are open to people who have never even heard of a do-si-do. For all the avid contra dancers out there, the Folk Arts Community is offering one advanced dance from 3-5pm on Saturday afternoon.

Elixir is known for its unusual instrumentation; clarinet, trumpet, trombone, and guitar accompany the more traditional fiddle. Hazzard-Watkins, the fiddler, says, “Contra dance music allows a great deal of freedom to incorporate wide-ranging influences and musical ideas.” The various band members can use their diverse musical backgrounds in flamenco, classical, jazz, Irish music, and other genres to add variety to their sets. The music and dance are intimately connected, to the point where Hazzard-Watkins says that the “performance and dance become more of a collaboration.” While dance and music are often interactive forms, this is especially true in contra dancing, where dances are 10-12 minutes long, inviting the band to, as Hazzard Watkins puts it, “create an emotional arc in the music.” Dancers experience the arc physically, rather than intellectually, so although they might “miss some of the details or nuances… [they] are invested in the music on a deeper level.”

Even without an all-star band, contra dance is just plain fun—choosing a stranger as a partner and taking a new partner every dance, is intrinsic to the spirit of contradance. Each dance set builds on itself, so that as the night goes on, beginners are able to do more and more complicated figures. The increasing difficulty of each dance, the energy of live music, the sociability of the participants—all yield a tumult of movement that resolves itself into surprising order, visible only from the sidelines where dancers rest and clap along to the music.
International House, 1414 E. 59th St. April 9-10. Friday, 7:30-11:30pm. Saturday, 3-5pm, 7-9pm, and 9:30pm-midnight. Prices vary, discounts for students available. (773)753-2274. fac.uchicago.edu

(Luke Batten and Jonathan Sadler)

His new work, whose Chicago premiere takes place this Saturday at the Velvet Lounge, is certainly an unusual take on the disorder, but the unexpected is not exactly new territory for Dargel or ICE. Both the singer-songwriter and the group boast a commitment to the unconventional. Dargel’s motivation stems from his desire to create artful pop music that is “immediate and engaging and personal, but has a level of meaning beyond your average Top 40 pop song.” ”Thirteen Near-Death Experiences” represents his return to classical writing. “It’s an evening of songs I’m singing with the ensemble,” he explains, “but [all of the songs are] classically notated.”

Although Dargel himself is not a member, he has been around since ICE’s beginning. He first became familiar with group’s earliest form at Oberlin, where many of its founding members went to college. Joshua Rubin, ICE’s Program Director, describes how ICE founder and flutist “Claire Chase hand-picked early members.” According to Dargel, her choices led ICE to become “a group of extremely skilled and virtuosic musicians, surveying the landscape of new, contemporary music.” He says there is a particularly “omnivorous” character to their repertoire that stems from a voracious interest in different kinds of music.

Founded in 2001, the ensemble has grown into a thirty-piece chamber group and expanded from its original headquarters in Chicago to include a New York City base as well. “All of us have other music jobs [such as] freelance gigs and teaching, but we’ve gotten so close and work so well together that we’ve really been able to grow as a group,” says Rubin. “ICE is the result of many years of combined sustained efforts—we all love it. It’s not just love though; it’s also a part of our professional careers.”

ICE concentrates on showcasing the work of young and emerging artists, although Rubin admits that “Corey Dargel specifically has a little different sound.” Dargel definitely believes this to be the case. “This piece is probably unlike anything you’ve heard,” he says in an unassuming tone. “It’s heartfelt and earnest but it has a complexity that gives it staying power.”

ICE was able to commission Dargel’s work after receiving an award from the Multi-Arts Production Fund , which seeks to help contemporary performance groups by granting one million dollars to up to forty projects per year. Eric Lamb, one of two ICE flutists, said, “This song cycle is so ICE, but yet so [Dargel]. I don’t think he has made any compromises aesthetically for our sake.” Dargel gladly agrees with this assessment, saying, “It feels good to be part of that [group]. I hope that I’m giving them something in return for what they’re giving me.”

Rubin remarks that the Velvet Lounge is a particularly significant venue because of Chicago’s history as a bastion for jazz. He says, “The Velvet Lounge has changed over the years, but it’s always a great place to perform in.” Dargel and six ICE members including Lamb and Rubin will be performing there to an audience that will hopefully, as Dargel says, “find something familiar in the music and feel perhaps a little less lonely than when they got there.”
Velvet Lounge, 67 E. Cermak Rd. March 13. Saturday, 9:30pm. (312)791-9050. iceorg.org

The age distribution of the crowd suggested that the star himself would be an elderly figure, venerable in his much-acclaimed musical dexterity and virtuosity. Instead, Reginald Robinson was cool. He wore a newsboy cap and corduroy jacket and spoke to the crowd like a neighbor, including points where he stopped, looked up, and told the audience, “Sorry, I’m still getting used to this keyboard. I love it though,” or, “This piece is a little more expansive, but I’ll see what I can do.”

Impressively, the keyboard didn’t impede Robinson from showcasing the beauty and vim of ragtime in the name of expanding the crowd’s understanding of the Oriental Institute’s Pioneers to the Past exhibit, which celebrates the story of the museum’s founding. His fingers ran lightly over the keys, and he offered up love stories, futuristic themes, and mix-it-up dance tunes. He wove in short reminiscences of his own Chicago childhood and ties to the South Side between the brief pieces, and his feet danced joyously over the pedals. The crowd gave him a standing ovation, which he accepted with a gracious chuckle, and it was clear that as far as they were concerned, he had no need to apologize for the keyboard.

The three nights of performances will focus on specific pieces by composers Manuel de Falla and Isaac Albéniz. The compositions will be framed by commentary from musicians, and from the Spanish novelist and art historian Antonio Muñoz Molina. The festival is organized by University of Chicago Presents and produced by the two founders of the Washington, D.C.-based Post-Classical Ensemble, American writer and music historian Joe Horowitz, and Spanish conductor Angel Gil-Ordóñez. Their combined thematic and interdisciplinary approach is critical for the festival’s broader significance. “Through this music we are also examining what happened to Spain in the twentieth century,” says Gil-Ordóñez.

Under the dictator Francisco Franco, Spanish culture was administered by the state. Popular composers, including Joaquín Rodrigo, whose “Concierto de Aranjuez” is probably the most famous Spanish melody, were declared “official” composers of the fascist government. The music they produced stands accused of presenting a shallow, cosmetic image of Spanish tradition, with a simplified flamenco at its core. The musicians involved with the festival have a deep respect for flamenco tradition, but Horowitz explains that, “as popularized, it has become another one of those Spanish postcards. It can marginalize Spanish culture more than celebrate it.” The festival organizers hope that deep, directed listening will challenge this image of a picturesque and backwards Spain, which Muñoz Molina has summarized as “bullfighters, poverty, flies, and passion.”

Thursday night’s performance of Manuel de Falla’s “Concerto for Keyboard” is a centerpiece of the festival. In three short movements of a few minutes each, Falla condensed centuries of Spanish musical tradition; the first movement interprets the songs of the Spanish Renaissance, the second draws on sixteenth-century church music, and the third references the later keyboard school. The Chicago Chamber Musicians, with Gil-Ordóñez conducting, will play the concerto twice: once near the beginning of the evening, and again at the end. The material in between, including poetry from St. John of the Cross and choral music by the University’s Motet Choir, comes from the musical traditions that the Concerto references; the accompanying commentary will illuminate these connections. Muñoz Molina describes the effect of this educational listening: “The second time the concerto is played you have the physical experience of feeling your ears open.”

On Friday night, renowned Spanish pianist Pedro Carboné will play “Iberia,” a series of twelve pieces by composer Isaac Albéniz. Each piece evokes a different setting from Spain at the beginning of the twentieth century, from Granada’s gypsy quarter to a working-class neighborhood in Madrid. The “Iberia” is well-known in orchestral arrangements, but these abridged versions simplify the chromatically dense pieces to what Horowitz again calls “a selection of slick tourist postcards.” Carboné will play the epic “Iberia” as it was originally intended, on a single keyboard. Carboné and Molina will discuss how the piece prefigures the forms and techniques of modernism. On Saturday night, Ortiz will conduct Carboné and the University’s student orchestra in a program of orchestral music. In conjunction with the festival, an exhibit at the Smart Museum features drawings and sculptures by Julio González, and the classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM) will play twenty hours of Spanish music this week.

The festival coincides with Spain’s presidency of the European Union, and is co-produced by the Sociedad Estatal de Conmemoraciones of the Spanish government and sponsored by both the Instituto Cervantes and the Consulate General of Spain in Chicago. “Beyond Flamenco” has yet to play for a Spanish audience, but the practice of redefining the parameters of national identity through a deep and collective listening of musical history has powerful significance for any audience. As Gil-Ordóñez suggests, “This music could be part of a future as well.”
Mandel Hall, 1131 E. 57th St. March 4-6. Thursday-Friday, 7:30pm; Saturday, 8pm. (773)702-8068. $20/$5 students. chicagopresents.uchicago.edu