Five Boroughs Music Festival Presents ARS LONGA DE LA HABANA

New York City's Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF), GEMAS, and the MetLife Foundation Music of the Americas Concert Series co-present Cuban early music ensemble Ars Longa de la Habana in their 5BMF debut. Performing a free program highlighting African influences on the baroque music of the New World, Ars Longa will perform on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church.

The concert showcases Ars Longa performing villancicos negros, musical works that were performed primarily around Christmastime, drawing from their 2013 album Gulumbá Gulumbé: Resonancias de África en el Nuevo Mundo.

Ars Longa, known for hosting the annual international Esteban Salas Early Music Festival in Havana, draws inspiration for this program from the poetry and music created in colonial Spanish America at a time when large numbers of enslaved African people were being taken to the continent. Phrases, themes, and rhythms from African folk culture blended with the Spanish and Portuguese languages and Christian liturgy to create new dialects and music. Ars Longa's program draws together these resonances of African cultures, representing their rhythms, ingenuity, and vitality.

5BMF's Winter/Spring 2023 programming additionally includes a collaboration with Voices of Ascension on the Voices of the New 2023 Winter Festival, with the final festival concert on Tuesday, February 28, 2023 at 7:30 p.m. at Roulette Intermedium; plus partnering with ChamberQUEER from June 9-12, 2023 in Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan, venues to be announced.

Five Boroughs Music Festival Concert Information
Ars Longa de la Habana: Gulumbá Gulumbé
Wednesday, March 15, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
St. Ignatius of Antioch Episcopal Church | 552 West End Ave. | NY, NY 10024
Tickets: Free with RSVP
RSVP Link: https://www.as-coa.org/events/ars-longa-de-la-habana-gulumba-gulumbe
Program to include:
Selections from Gulumbá Gulumbé. Resonancias de África en el Nuevo Mundo

Artists:
Teresa Paz, soprano and director
Adalis Santiesteban, mezzo soprano
Andrea Trueba, alto
Ariel Hernández Roque, tenor
Yunie Gainza, baritone
Daniel Bernaza Douglas, recorder
Oscar Cañizares, sackbut
Abrahan Castillo, bassoon
Beatriz López Paz, violin and viola da gamba
Arianna Ochoa Mesa, violin and viola da gamba
Aland López, guitar
David Pérez, keyboard

Since 2007, Five Boroughs Music Festival (5BMF) has brought virtuosic chamber music performances of the highest caliber to every borough of NYC, cultivating new audiences for the genre and encouraging music lovers to look beyond Manhattan for outstanding performances. Lauded as "imaginative" by The New York Times, "enterprising" by The New Yorker, and "vital" by WQXR's Operavore blog, 5BMF's commitment to musical outreach and diverse programming has distinguished it as a standout presence in the New York City arts community from its earliest days.

5BMF's artist roster of over 500 individual performers and ensembles is comprised of talented emerging artists and distinguished musicians alike, representing a diverse range of musical genres and styles. Its venues are just as eclectic, and have included performing arts spaces, cultural centers, and historic New York City landmarks such as Federal Hall, Pregones Theater, Flushing Town Hall, King Manor Museum, Brooklyn Historical Society, the Alice Austen House, and the Staten Island Museum, to name merely a few.

As champions of new music, 5BMF has commissioned over 70 composers and presented world premieres of their works all across New York City, most notably the borough-wide tours of its quinquennial commissioning project, the Five Borough Songbook Volumes I, II and III. 5BMF's outreach initiatives continue to expand every year, and have included program-related interactive lectures and discussions, public masterclasses with world renowned performing artists, and free public programming. Learn more at www.5bmf.org.

About Ars Longa de la Habana
Ars Longa de la Habana, founded in Havana in 1994 by Teresa Paz and Aland López, is dedicated to the performance of Latin American and Cuban colonial music. Over the past 20 years, Ars Longa has performed regularly at the most prestigious music venues of the island and has given concerts and participated in international festivals in Spain, Italy, France, Sweden, Austria, Croatia, Slovenia, Venezuela, Mexico, and Ecuador. In addition to promoting the interpretation of early music in Cuba, Ars Longa hosts the annual international Esteban Salas Early Music Festival in Havana, which brings musicians and ensembles from around the world for concerts and masterclasses. The ensemble has released several CDs that have won recognition and prizes in Europe from Diapason, Le Monde de la Musique, Télérama, and Classica. They have performed on the GEMAS series twice in New York to packed houses.

Soprano Teresa Paz, Ars Longa's co-founder and director, holds a master's degree in Spanish music from the University of Valladolid in Spain and serves as the director of the concert venue at the Church of San Francisco of Paula in Havana, which regularly presents early music concerts. In 1994, she and Aland López formed Ars Longa, the first of its kind in Cuba. She is also the founder and director of the annual Esteban Salas Early Music Festival, which brings early music players from around the world. It serves as a meeting place in Cuba that through workshops and conferences assists the development of early music performance and interpretation. Teresa was the first to initiate academic plans to teach early music in Cuba. To put her informed historical interpretation into practice, she established the Baroque Orchestra of the Escuela Nacional de Música, Havana. She has attended workshops in early music singing and interpretation with such international specialists as Josep Cabré, Evelyn Tubb, and Claudio Abbado. Teresa has been honored internationally for her recording projects of unknown works by Cuban and other Latin American composers.

The series was founded in 2012 and is co-directed by the celebrated soprano Nell Snaidas and Americas Society Music Director Sebastián Zubieta. The mission of GEMAS is to bring remarkable early music from the Americas and the best early music performers from Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada to New York audiences. Since 2012, the series has presented lutenist Paul O'Dette, Ars Subtilior specialists Mala Punica, Meridionalis, The Bishop's Band, and Jonathon Adams, among many others, at Americas Society, The Hispanic Society of America, Trinity Wall Street, St Paul's Chapel at Columbia University, and online.

Since 2007, Gotham Early Music Scene (GEMS) has been promoting and supporting "early music" in New York City through programs including Midtown Concerts, a series of weekly free daytime concerts at the Church of the Transfiguration on East 29th Street, GEMS Live!, a booking agency representing New York-based ensembles, GEMS Concert Services, serving organizations and ensembles with marketing, box office, and front-of-house functions, Notes on the Scene, a semi-monthly newsletter emailed to about 8,500 subscribers, collaborations with major New York cultural institutions, the GEMAS series, and fiscal sponsorship and administrative services to 21 established and emerging organizations.

Americas Society is the premier forum dedicated to education, debate, and dialogue in the Americas. Its mission is to foster an understanding of the contemporary political, social, and economic issues confronting Latin America, the Caribbean, and Canada, and to increase public awareness and appreciation of the diverse cultural heritage of the Americas and the importance of the inter-American relationship. Since 1965, Music of the Americas has been presenting artists who are both superb musicians in their own right and cultural ambassadors of myriad social and musical traditions, creating a vibrant space and a unique opportunity to hear distinctive and significant music.

Photo Credit: Nicolas Manassi