Gonzalo de Baena’s Arte novamente inventada pera aprender a tãger (Newly devised method for learning to play) was the first book of keyboard music ever printed on the Iberian Peninsula. Lost for centuries, it was rediscovered in 1992, and early music keyboardist Bruno Forst has since painstakingly decoded its unique tablature system and edited a modern edition, published in 2012. Baena compiled mostly polyphonic vocal music by various composers, from the old Flemish Masters he himself studied, to contemporaries thriving alongside him in the rich musical environment of Spain under the Catholic Monarchs, along with pieces of his own and several by his son, Antonio.
"The founding of the Ensemble Modern (EM) in 1980 as an initiative of students of the Junge Deutsche Philharmonie pursued the goal of supporting New Music and giving it appropriate performances. Since 1985 the EM, which is democratically organised, has been resident in Frankfurt am Main. It is among the world’s leading ensembles for Contemporary Music…"
In addition to being one of Beethovens most emblematic works, the Piano Sonata no.32 op.111 (1821-22) is a manifesto of radical modernity. It begins the process of disintegration of sonata form, a formal pillar for any composer of the preceding century, and introduces in its second movement a new method of constructing the musical phrase, to such an extent that some commentators regard it as marking the first stirrings of jazz. The innovations it presented, particularly in the field of rhythm, left most of the composers contemporaries perplexed. Here is an ideal space for the Aka Moon trio to occupy. It has called on three strong musical personalities for the occasion: the singer Fredy Massamba, who contributes his expressive power as an African storyteller.
Italy's foremost female rock singer, Gianna Nannini, was born in Siena on June 14, 1956, to a family that included a renowned industrialist and Siena Football Club president father and a Formula One pilot brother. Often described as the creative rebel in the family, Nannini attended the Lucca Conservatory throughout her entire adolescence, where she was trained as a pianist…
Ibn Battuta, dubbed the traveler of Islam, was a Moroccan scholar who at the age of 21 began a series of travels that eventually covered all of the Muslim world and several lands beyond. He traversed the Middle East, making the pilgrimage to Mecca and seeing the other great capitals of the region; traveled to what was then El Andalus in Spain and along the Mediterranean coast; recorded the glories of the Byzantine empire in its later stages; traveled to India, where he was appointed the Sultan's ambassador to China and described that culture as well…