Free live music and stuff in Las Palmas, March 2025

What we’ve seen in March.

• 8 March: NIA @ Plaza de Canarias, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  This year I was trying to avoid big crowds, so the only Carnaval concert I went to was this one. And it was totally worth it.
• 13 March: «El cuerpo del delito: el placer femenino en la cultura» @ Centro de Arte La Regenta, Calle León y Castillo, 427
  Presented by Yolanda Peralta Sierra, doctor in History of Art and lecturer at the Universidad de La Laguna. From Hildegard of Bingen to Carolee Schneemann, Cabello/Carceller, Mari Chordà and Canarian artists Carmela García and Yapci Ramos. A part of the cycle of talks «Envueltos en una llama roja: sexo y erotismo en la cultura audiovisual contemporánea».

  

• 14 March: Sofar concert @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1
  With Good Franco, Étel Santos and Aristides Moreno. A note to myself: no more happenings featuring Aristides Moreno for me, thank you very much.
• 20 March: «Maestras del piano» @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1
  The concert of the students of Escuela Municipal de Educación Musical de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Works of women composers of 19^th and 20^th centuries such as Nancy Faber, Anne Crosby, Christine Donkin and Clara Schumann.

  

• 22 March: «El grabado, un lenguaje multidimensional» Gabinete Literario, Plaza de Cairasco, 1
  A lecture by Ana de la Puente Arrate, the newest member of Real Academia Canaria de Bellas Artes de San Miguel Arcángel.
• 27 March: Pino Quimont Trio @ Palacete Rodríguez Quegles, Calle Benito Pérez Galdós, 4
  Pino Quimont (vocals) accompanied by Néstor García (guitar) and Leandro Ojeda (double bass). Standards like Black Coffee, Cuando vuelva a tu lado (What a Difference a Day Makes), I’m Beginning to See the Light, Invitation and, less predictably, All Blues, Los ejes de mi carreta and We Are the Champions.

  

• 29 March: Sofar concert @ Biblioteca Pública del Estado, Calle Muelle de Las Palmas
  Yes, another Sofar concert — with Nayaban Jean, Álvaro Belchí and Meliē.

And exhibitions:

• 30 January — 25 May: «Cuerpo en medio» @ CAAM – San Antonio Abad, Plaza San Antonio Abad
  Works by Macarena Nieves Cáceres.

  

• 31 January — 22 March: «Fumi aurum templum» @ Centro de Arte La Regenta
  Works by Cristina Déniz Sosa.

• 31 January — 22 March: «Zaj, 60 años» @ Centro de Arte La Regenta
  Retrospective of the group zaj, with works of Juan Hidalgo, Walter Marchetti and Esther Ferrer.

  

• 27 February — 22 March: «Vestimenta Tradicional de Gran Canaria durante los siglos XVIII y XIX» @ Museo Castillo de Mata, Calle Domingo Guerra del Río, 147
  42 faithful reproductions of the traditional Canarian garments from the 18^th and 19^th centuries.

  

• 28 February — 28 March: «Cariño Mío» @ Centro de Artes Plásticas (CAP), Calle Colón, 8
  Textile art by Cristina Ortega Viera. Guided tour on 14 March.

  

And that was it for March.

Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

by Yuval Noah Harari

“Even more readable, even more important, than his excellent Sapiens”, says the quote on its back cover (by Kazuo Ishiguro, no less). Is it really so?

I have to admit that yes, it is. With chapters titles such as A Brief History of Lawns, Gap the Mind and Why Bankers are Different from Vampires, this book reads like a crime thriller. Well, the history of humankind is a crime thriller, but there have been only a few good storytellers. Harari is one of them.

On a more personal note, Homo Deus gives me a fair few ideas for my (hopefully near) future classes.

Suppose you were given a choice between the following two vacation packages:

Stone Age package: On day one we will hike for ten hours in a pristine forest, setting camp for the night in a clearing by a river. On day two we will canoe down the river for ten hours, camping on the shores of a small lake. On day three we will learn from the native people how to fish in the lake and how to find mushrooms in the nearby woods.

Modern proletarian package: On day one we will work for ten hours in a polluted textile factory, passing the night in a cramped apartment block. On day two we will work for ten hours as cashiers in the local department store, going back to sleep in the same apartment block. On day three we will learn from the native people how to open a bank account and fill out mortgage forms.

Which package would you choose?

And how about this (published in 2015):

Power will definitely not shift back to ordinary voters if Britain leaves the EU nor if Trump takes over the White House.

The task: rephrase the above sentence from the 2025 perspective, using both simple past and past perfect.

Some other predictions haven’t come true — yet. So far we didn’t see artificial intelligence meaningfully replacing doctors, lawyers and flight dispatchers, although there has been a surge in ChatGPT-generated fake research papers and job applications. What we do see at work is much more powerful natural stupidity. It doesn’t mean we are safe.

Cool World

a film by Ralph Bakshi

There goes €1 that I’ll never see again.

If you’ve ever seen Who Framed Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with this one. And if you’ve never seen Roger Rabbit, don’t bother with Cool World either: watch Roger Rabbit.

So what’s wrong with this film? Just about everything.

Cool World concludes the cycle Ralph Bakshi: Urban Noir, and about time too.

The Birdcage

a film by Mike Nichols
screenplay by Elaine May

Like Heaven Can Wait, this comedy is a remake. Which proves the point that a remake also could be fun — especially when (re)made by the great Nichols and May. Unencumbered by comparisons with the French movie, I enjoyed The Birdcage on its own right. Starring Robin Williams, Nathan Lane, Gene Hackman, Dianne Wiest, Christine Baranski and Hank Azaria.

American Pop

a film by Ralph Bakshi

Finally, a Bakshi film that I actually liked. A soundtrack for the (best part of) 20^th century, something for kids of today to watch. Don’t let the title put you off (yes, it makes me cringe too): “pop” here is short for popular music, moving from ragtime to punk with jazz, swing, soul and rock in between. Not pop music. I still don’t get why American artists insist on naming their creations “American something”.

It’s also pretty uneven. The story kind of disintegrates towards the end — as the quality of music goes down. Yet there are some truly beautiful or otherwise funny bits that made my night.

Heaven Can Wait

a film by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry
screenplay by Elaine May and Warren Beatty
music by Dave Grusin

Imagine the frustration of Warren “I’m cute and I know it” Beatty who co-directed, co-wrote, produced and starred in this 1978 comedy. He was nominated for Oscars in all four corresponding categories and won none. However, the reason I watched Heaven Can Wait in the first place was not Beatty but his co-writer, to whom the new cycle Conociendo a Elaine May by Vértigo is dedicated. Alas, I missed the first film of the cycle.

I enjoyed the movie. Neither Beatty nor Julie Christie impressed me much, but the cast of supporting actors did. My favourite was Dyan Cannon as Julia, the murderous alcoholic wife of Mr. Farnsworth. Also, I’ve been a fan of Dave Grusin for the last forty years or so and his score for the film didn’t disappoint.

Magical Caresses

a series of short films by Lori Malépart-Traversy
animation by Keyu Chen and Lori Malépart-Traversy

From the director of Le clitoris comes this charming “animated documentary series based on Caresses Magiques, a book series written and edited by Sarah Gagnon-Piché and Sara Hébert” (I took this quote from the end credits). The “animated documentary series” is really a mini-series, of five animated shorts no longer than 4 minutes each; and the “book series” was just two volumes, now out of print. The first of the films is narrated in English by Ms Malépart-Traversy herself; the other four feauture the voices of, I suppose, some of the book’s heroines (in French, with English subtitles). You can watch all the films on the National Film Board of Canada web site or on Vimeo (scroll down to the embedded videos).

Planeta

by Ana Oncina

From the author of Croqueta y Empanadilla comes something completely, utterly different. Also, profoundly beautiful. And as much unsettling. You’ll feel unsettled if you couldn’t figure out what is reality (F, “forest”) and what is dream (P, “Planeta”), especially when in P you also dream about F. As Valentina does. On top of that, in P all human communication, apart from that with live-in partner, happens in virtual reality (V).

Coonskin

a film by Ralph Bakshi

Ralph Bakshi’s third feature looks like a combination of Fritz the Cat (animals) and Heavy Traffic (humans and live action). Finally, some sort of coherent plot, which makes the film actually watchable without constant thinking of when it’s gonna end. There is marginally less violence than in his two previous efforts and practically no sex — I wish this was the other way round. For me, Coonskin was the least offensive one of the three Bakshi’s films I’ve seen so far. Or maybe I’m developing tolerance to this stuff.

Aitana & Ozogoche

Both documentaries were screened last Thursday in Casa de Colón.

Aitana (2023)

a film by Marina Alberti

Marina Alberti’s directorial debut is a letter of love to her mother, Aitana Alberti León, and grandmother, María Teresa León. Now Aitana starts to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease, which also affected María Teresa.

Now this was not in the film: according to Spanish Wikipedia, María Teresa León spent her last years of life in a sanatorium in Majadahonda, near Madrid. Her loving husband, Rafael Alberti, never accepted María Teresa’s illness and... escaped to Rome. What a gentlemen! She died alone and forgotten.

Ozogoche (2023)

a film by Joe Houlberg Silva

In a recent interview, the director Joe Houlberg says that it took six years to film Ozogoche. In the beginning it was supposed to be a documentary about strange behaviour of migratory birds, upland sandpipers (Bartramia longicauda), known in Ecuador as cuvivíes. There is no shortage of hypotheses why some of these birds travel some 10,000 kilometers from North America to Ozogoche lagoons only to plummet into the icy waters and die. What happened though, after these years of living with local community, the film creators realised that poor cuvivíes became, in words of Houlberg, “just an allegory of the true story <...>, the story of an indigenous family in the Ecuadorian páramo who are waiting for their relatives, waiting for something to change”. If you liked the magical realism of El Eco, you’ll fall in love with Ozogoche.

Free live music and stuff in Las Palmas, February 2025

That’s what we’ve seen this month:

• 18 January — 5 March: Nikola Tesla. El genio de la electricidad moderna @ Parque de San Telmo, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  The first exhibition in Spain to bear the official seal of the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade.

  

• 5 February: Intervención arqueológica en el Solar Norte de la Catedral de Canarias, Plaza de Santa Ana
  A guided tour organised by Cabildo de Gran Canaria.

  

• 12 February: Infante/Lemes/Colina Trio @ Palacete Rodríguez Quegles, Calle Benito Pérez Galdós, 4
  Javier Colina (double bass, accordion), Javier Infante (guitar) and Alexis Lemes (timple). The programme included material from the trio’s debut album Guiguan.

  

• 15 February: «Agüita fresca: Entre salsa y boleros» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  All-star band featuring Magdalena Padilla (vocals), Yuniel Rascón (guitar, tres), Fofi Lusson (bass) and Totó Noriega (percussion). Still, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. “Between salsa and boleros”, I didn’t hear a single salsa. Sure, Bésame mucho, Guantanamera and Quizás, quizás, quizás are all perennial classics... that were played, covered and re-covered ad nauseam. Look, there are thousands of fantastic and equally catchy Latin songs, why not trying something new. Agüita fresca? I’d say agua estancada.

  

• 11 February — 16 March: «Macaronesia 1975—2025» @ Casa de Colón, Calle Colón, 1
  The last 50 years of Macaronesian history in 146 photos. Organised by FEDAC and Memoria digital de Lanzarote.

  

• 20 February: «Pasión y ritmo» @ Plaza del Pilar Nuevo
  Now, that was one helluva concert! La Banda Sinfónica Municipal de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria went big-band mode with standards such as At the Mambo Inn, Hot House and Soul Bossa Nova. Conductor: Juan Roda Sapiña. The line-up and full programme are available here.

  

And that was it for February.