Cal Poly to Host Spanish Composer Anna Cazurra for Lecture May 5

SAN LUIS OBISPO – Anna Cazurra, one of Spain’s leading composers, will present a lecture on new trends in Spain’s contemporary music Thursday, May 5, at Cal Poly.

The event will begin at 11 a.m. in Room 218 of the Davidson Music Center (Building 45). Titled "The State of Spanish Composition in Our Modern World," the lecture will primarily draw from Cazurra’s own recent works.

Cazurra’s suite for piano, “Hesperia,” has been performed in Carnegie Hall and numerous prestigious festivals, rapidly becoming part of the standard performing repertoire from the Iberian peninsula. Her keyboard works have been compared to those of Albéniz and Granados, though according to Cal Poly Music Professor Craig Russell her harmonic vocabulary is more daring and her rhythms more dance-like. Her work “Atlántida” for solo piano and string orchestra is widely performed and has won over many audiences with infectious rhythms and enchanting melodies.

Cazurra has won many of Spain’s major prizes and awards, such as the Frederic Mompou Young Musicians Prize (1995 and 1998), the Caixa de Sabadell Foundation Prize and the Provincial Government of Catalonia Award of Distinction.

Her professional activities as composer, teacher and researcher are shared among the University of Tarragona, the Catholic University of Valencia and the Superior Conservatory of Music of Castellón in Valencia. She teaches doctoral classes at the Catholic University of Valencia, where she is directing a research project on the musical historiography of Valencia between 1880 and 1939—a project funded by the government of Valencia.

Cazurra is presently in the final stages of orchestrating her newest opera, “Farsante” (“The Sham”)—a witty farce that pokes irreverent fun at academic pomposity, scholarly nepotism and duplicitous deception.

The free May 5 lecture is sponsored by the Cal Poly Music Department, the College of Liberal Arts and Doyle International Programs.

For more information, call the Music Department at 805-756-2406.

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