Classical pianist Donna Coleman traces the legacy of Manuel Saumell, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Ignacio Cervantes in that most American of muscial genres: ragtime. By weaving the myriad cultural cross-currents between Cuba and the U.S. from 1830 to 1920, Coleman highlights Gottchalk’s African musical idioms, Saumell’s habaneras and Cervantes’s danzas cubanas, and establishes a direct link to Scott Joplin and ragtime music.
This event is part of our CreateNYC Language Access Series on Cuban History, Art, and Literature. This musical presentation will be in English.
DUE TO THE COVID PANDEMIC, THIS EVENT WILL BE STREAMED THROUGH OUR YOUTUBE CHANNEL.
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For a complementary PROGRAM of the presentation, click here:
CCCNY 2021 Ragtime Program
Donna Coleman’s research into American and twentieth century repertories, with focus on the music of Charles Ives and on the evolving Ragtime tradition, produced two world acclaimed recordings for Et’Cetera Records, two for ABC Classics (Sydney), and two for her own label, OutBach®, and earned fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the North Carolina and the Southern Arts Federations, the Rockefeller Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Fulbright Foundation, Radcliffe College, and Second Prize in the first John F Kennedy Center International American Music Competition, among many other awards. A Fulbright Senior Scholar Fellowship sponsored her first visit to Australia that led to her appointment as Head of Keyboard in the Victorian College of the Arts (Melbourne) and a twenty-five year, ongoing commitment to nurturing Australia’s finest talent. She has produced and performed in dozens of world concert tours and direct broadcasts for ABC Classic FM, and she created the OutBach® project that explores relationships between Indigenous, art, and popular music and presents performances in unexpected locations and combinations such as the world-first piano and didgeridoo duo collaborations and Bach’s keyboard concerti with orchestras of guitars. Jean-Marc Warszawksi, writing for Musicologie.org about Coleman’s recording of the thirty-seven Danzas Cubanas by Ignacio Cervantes, entitled Don’t Touch Me, said, “everything here is a rare musical success, thanks to the serene majesty of the interpretation, the tone colour, the presentation, and the interest and curiosity that these compositions arouse.” In 2011, Donna was a keynote concert presenter for Indiana University’s Latin American Music Center 50th Anniversary Conference. All of Donna’s CDs are available at amazon.com and iTunes.
This event is co-sponsored by Instituto Cervantes
And is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
With the promotional collaboration of
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