Flute Center of New York Salon Series presents:
Duo Lugares Comunes Concert
Katrina Penman, flutist & composer
María Elena Peña de Prada, guitarist, composer & poet
Virtual Premier on Youtube: September 15, 2022, 5:00PM ET
“Daughters of Our Time”
About the project:
The mission of our duo, since the start, has been to move away from our classical training and explore popular styles. In our debut radio appearance in 2016 on the programme “Tiempo de Mujeres” (live from Valladolid’s Teatro Calderón, on Spanish Radio Cadena Ser), which presents enterprising women of all different professions, we explored the common ground between us through the folk music of our countries of origin, Great Britain and Cuba, and our adopted homeland, Spain. Following this, we began to take traditional folk music from Latin America, Ireland, Scotland and Spain, and re-arrange it for flute and classical guitar, with some challenging variations.
As well as performing, we self-publish our arrangements for flute and guitar via our patron base in order to share it with a wider community of music lovers and performers, both professional and amateur. As teachers and music lovers, it is always a great preoccupation of ours to create music that people will enjoy, both those who play and those who listen.
In January 2021 we began to work on a new project, composing music that is conceived from the inspiration of pioneering female poets across the oceans, from the Americas and the Celtic countries, such as Rosalía de Castro, Sylvia Plath, Alfonsina Storni, Elvira Sastre and Eavan Boland. These poets were forward thinking in their ideas and in their feminist philosophies, and were also preoccupied by the themes of journeys and of emigration, which are close to our own hearts.
Our Suite of pieces “Memories”, has generated interest in Spain, with performances including students at the Conservatorio Superior de Cordoba at the annual concert celebrating women’s rights, and as part of the Andalusian conservatories competition for performances of chamber music written by women. This piece has recently been published by Brotons & Mercadal.
In the programme we also included music written for us by Vincenzo Napoli on a text by Emily Dickinson, as well as an arrangement by guitarist José Luis Merlín. We have shared music from this project through live and streamed performances at different literary and cultural festivales, including a lecture recital at the Cervantes Museum in Valladolid, reciting poetry in both Spanish and English to accompany our music, as well as a feature on regional television.
On our first visit to the USA in August 2022, where we are honoured to perform at the National Flute Association’s 50th Anniversary Convention in Chicago, we wish to present a selection of music from our project, in order to share the evolution of our most recent musical and poetic journeys through our own experience as women composers and performers.
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