#Thursday Colloquium with Natasha Loges
How can we understand classical music as a truly global phenomenon rather than a Western tradition exported elsewhere? At her Thursday Colloquium, Natasha Loges presents her current project at HIAS which deals with questions of twentieth-century art song composed outside Europe and North America.
In regions where Western musical culture was introduced through colonization or internal modernization agendas, local composers created substantial bodies of art song that challenge conventional national classifications. The presentation explores how we might position these musicians between multiple cultural traditions, revealing complex trajectories that existing music histories typically ignore or relegate to the exotic.
Drawing on examples from East Asia, Latin America, the Mediterranean and South Africa, Natasha Loges will present instances from the lives and works of figures such as José Manuel Jiménez Berroa, the so-called Ebony Liszt who moved between Cuba and Hamburg, and Ellinor Valesby, whose life spanned Germany, China and Argentina. By examining these songs, which often blend national musical idioms, complicate linguistic boundaries, and inhabit multiple homes simultaneously, the presentation raises questions about how we classify, theorise and perform this music, while working toward a more accurate and inclusive understanding of what classical music is and has been.
This event is addressed to fellows and their tandem partners.