Friday 31 January 2020

Free live music and dance in Las Palmas, January 2020

This month, I attended several events of Festival ...en paralelo. But en paralelo to what? To the 36th International Music Festival of the Canary Islands (FIMC). All performances en paralelo were free of charge, featured Canarian artists and took place on more than one island. I, naturally, went to those in Las Palmas.

  • 16 January: Sinakt/Teresa Lorenzo/Paloma Hurtado @ Plaza Jardines del Atlántico, Las Canteras, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
      Included Ephímera by Paloma Hurtado (modern dance), Pájaro by Teresa Lorenzo (modern dance) and Fly on Fire by Sinakt (aerial acts and fire twirling).
  • 19 January: Coro Ainur and Ensemble OSLP - Réquiem de Fauré @ Iglesia San Francisco de Asís
      Timur and I went to see the Chamber Choir Ainur and a group of musicians from Orquesta Sinfónica de Las Palmas performing in the Church of St. Francis of Assisi. My, it turned out to be unexpectedly crowded. The concert started straight after Mass and I guess some Mass-goers just stayed there. The programme included
      • Francisco Guerrero: Trahe me post te
      • Melchor López: Ave Regina caelorum
      • Franz Biebl: Ave María
      • César Alejandro Carrillo: Salve Regina
      • Urmas Sisask: Seisab valurikas Ema
      • Anon., arr. S. Class: Maria durch ein Dornwald ging
      • Philip Stopford: Ave Regina caelorum
      • Gabriel Fauré: Réquiem, Op. 48 (1893 version)
  • 20 January: Cuarteto Ornati @ Conservatorio Superior de Música de Canarias, calle Maninidra, 1
And the other stuff this month was not bad either.
  • 23 January: Bandolero @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León
      The 2020 season of Mousikê La Laguna was opened by José Manuel Ruiz Motos aka “Bandolero” with a masterclass of flamenco percussion, with a nice little jam of “masterstudents” (guitar, flute, cajón, vocal...) in the end.

  • 24 January: Supernatural @ The Paper Club, Calle Remedios, 10

  • 25 January: Benito Cabrera @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
      Musicando is back! Benito Cabrera presented his new programme Canarias: vino al mundo, with participation of the dancer, choreorgapher and body percussionist Jep Meléndez and singer Jose Manuel Ramos.

Looking forward to more music in February.

Wednesday 29 January 2020

Свидетели Путина

a film by Vitaly Mansky

The first Documental del Mes of 2020 in Teatro Guiniguada was Los testigos de Putin (Putin’s Witnesses), in Russian with Spanish subtitles. The film opens with a home video footage on the New Year’s Eve 1999. We hear Yeltsin’s resignation speech on the Russian TV. In contrast to Mansky himself at the time (I think), his wife immediately realises what’s going on and what’s in store for Russia and Russians.

No, I didn’t learn much new about our eagle Don Reba from this documentary, but many half- or well-forgotten facts and faces came rushing back. In my humble opinion, these are the three key scenes:

  • The spookiest: the one at the 2000 presidential campaign headquarters and Mansky’s “where are they now?” commentary. Of all the people in the room, only trusty Medved, at the time of the film’s release, was still flying high; not for much longer though. Incidentally, Stierlitz gets mentioned as if to remind us what was the first profession of our Dobby.
  • The most poignant: the one where Boris Nikolaevich, the very same election night, tries (unsuccessfully) to phone his protégé and congratulate him. The naïveté of the ex-president is astounding and yet something that one could fully expect from him. In spite of, or thanks to, his many flaws, Yeltsin was only a human being — quite unlike his successor.
  • The creepiest: Mikhalkov & Mikhalkov at the recording of the “new” (Stalin and Lenin out, the God in) State Anthem. As Father Ted put it, “Funny how you get more right-wing as you get older”.

Monday 27 January 2020

LILA: Historia Gráfica de una Lucha

by Toni Galmés and Mª Ángeles Cabré
preface by Paula Bonet

When I saw it in the library, from the far, my first thought was: “Finally, a book about my favourite singer”! Of course, I was wrong, but still I am thankful to Lila Downs for the fact I opened this book and took it home.

Lila: historia gráfica de una lucha is a Spanish version of Lila: història gràfica d’una lluita and presents, to quote its publisher, Comanegra, “the history of feminism through its most representative images”. No, it is more than that. Artists are the fighters, and the images are the weapons. But how much feminist history and art one can fit in a 160-page volume? Quite a lot, actually. From abolitionism and suffragist movement to Arab Spring, Malala, Women’s March, #MeToo and, closer home,“Yo también soy adúltera”, 15-M movement and La Manada case; and, art-wise, from Delacroix and Goya through Rosie the Riveter to Guerrilla Girls, Femen, Pussy Riot, Pussyhat, and even Rosalía. Informative and up-to-date — I didn’t know about Ana Orantes murder or Rojava revolution before — and a pleasure to leaf through. My only issue is with the small size of illustrations placed in the margins, while on some pages the same margins are left completely blank.

Saturday 25 January 2020

I’d Rather Go Blind

by Billy Foster, Ellington Jordan and Etta James

So, if you have had enough Burns by now, why not celebrate today the birthday(s) of Robert Boyle (1627), Anna Gardner (1816), W. Somerset Maugham (1874), Virginia Woolf (1882), Florence Mills (1896), Witold Lutosławski (1913), Ilya Prigogine (1917), Arvid Carlsson (1923), Antônio Carlos Jobim (1927) or Benny Golson (1929)? As for me, I fancy to play some Etta James (1938–2012) who, incidentally, was born the same day as Vladimir Vysotsky. Here is a 1975 live version of I’d Rather Go Blind, originally recorded in 1967 and released the following year.

Saturday 18 January 2020

How to Train Your Dragon trilogy

Timur’s got this box set as a delayed birthday present; these (extended) Christmas holidays we watched all three films.

How to Train Your Dragon

a film by Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders

The first film in the series, and, unsurprisingly, the best. Given that it is co-directed by DeBlois and Sanders, the dynamic duo behind Lilo & Stitch, it is hardly surprising that one of the protagonists, viz. the dragon Toothless, seems to be just a gracile, winged, cat-like version of the famous Experiment 626. And why not? The only drawback is the absence of a worthy villain.

How to Train Your Dragon 2

a film by Dean DeBlois

Wow. Hiccup finds his mother, loses his father, finally faces a human baddie and becomes a new Viking chief. Meanwhile, our feline Stich becomes a new dragon alpha (a glaring misnomer; dragons are not known to be social animals — probably the film creators couldn’t find a better word for a dragon analogue of “king of the beasts”). In spite of all this, the “2” film underwhelms. Most sophomore efforts do.

How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World

a film by Dean DeBlois

If the “2” film had a predictable tyrant of Drago Bludvist, The Hidden World features much subtler Grimmel (voiced by the great F. Murray Abraham, who brought to life many a villain par excellence), a dragon killer for the sake of pure evilness. The island of Berk in the beginning of the film, “the world’s first dragon Viking utopia”, looks more like Chinatown at the Chinese New Year and the music at times also gets rather oriental — a welcome change from whatever was passing for Viking music in the first two films. The stunning visual effects (not quite) offset the patently formulaic ending of the saga.

Wednesday 15 January 2020

Fifteen more short films

Just like last year, I went to Teatro Guiniguada where the 15 winning films of the San Rafael en Corto were screened. Just like last year, it was a mixed bag. My favourite films were La Bañera by Jonay García, La Ronda by Jessica Marrero Díaz and La nueva hermandad by Sergio Gerson Ramos.

Proyección del palmarés de la XV edición de SREC

Teatro Guiniguada, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Wednesday, 15 January 2020, 19:30
  1. Todo bien by Willy Suárez
  2. Amarás al prójimo by Vasni J. Ramos
  3. Un segundo by Sonia de la Cruz and Paloma Maza
  4. Boca que vuela by Emilia Sacristán and Lola Cáceres
  5. Otro futuro posible by Gotzon Cañada and Erika Urquiola
  6. Realidad invisible by Escuela de Cine “Secuencia 27”
  7. Nueces by Lamberto Guerra
  8. La Bañera by Jonay García
  9. Amores Eclipse by Carlos Martín
  10. Mikes, Padre e Hijo by Pablo Ramírez and Michael Friedl
  11. Ojo por ojo by Jesús Etc
  12. Una jaula sin puerta by Dunia E. Marmus
  13. La Ronda by Jessica Marrero Díaz
  14. Renacer by Agustín Domínguez
  15. La nueva hermandad by Sergio Gerson Ramos

Wednesday 8 January 2020

China Fast Forward

by Sergi Vicente
translated by Agnès González Dalmau

Originally written in Catalan, translated to Spanish and named China Fast Forward, this book intrigued me from the start. Not only did the fist chapter, Pero ¿qué diablos hago aquí?, fail to answer this very question, “What the hell am I doing here?”: it also confirmed that the author himself never got the answer during all his twelve years in China. Vicente started his Chinese stint as an English teacher, then continued as a TV3 correspondent, then had enough of it. I can’t blame him. I liked the anecdotes of his travels around China the most; less so stories of encounters with Chinese bureaucracy (after a while, they get rather samey — I guess they really were); and even less his excursuses into recent Chinese history and politics. For the benefit of those interested in Chinese language it would be useful to include hanzi or at the very least Pinyin rather than ambiguous romanisation used by the author. A fascinating book nevertheless; read it before it becomes hopelessly out of date.

En pocas semanas perfeccioné mi capacidad de responder a mis compañeros de viaje. Me inventaba ejercicios de memorización de vocabulario, como cuando a cada nuevo encuentro decía que era de un lugar diferente:
— Vengo de Alemania.
— Ah... Alemania. Buenos coches.
O bien:
— Vengo de Suiza.
— Ah... Suiza. Buenos relojes.
Aprendidos los más fáciles, me atrevía con países como Israel, Bulgaria... y recuerdo haber probado también con algún país africano.
— Vengo de Nigeria.
— Ah... Nigeria... ¿En qué continente está?
— África.
— Ah.
— En realidad soy negro, pero llevo demasiado tiempo sin ver el sol.
— ¿Eh?
— Un poco como Michael Jackson, ya sabes.
— ¿Quién?
Extraordinario. Su mundo, sus referentes, su sentido del humor... no tenían nada que ver con los míos. Aunque alguno acabó sonriendo cuando le dije que había pasado de ser negro a blanco.