Paco Díez & Anthony Geist
"Twelve Songs for Twelve Poets"
Music is deeply imbedded in the DNA of poetry. From the epic poems of Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages to Cuban repentismo and Puerto Rican décimas, from traditional balladry to contemporary singer-songwriters, over the centuries poetry has been transmitted orally through music.
“Twelve Songs for Twelve Poets” is a unique, creative project, offering twelve poems by Spanish-language poets translated to English and recited by Anthony Geist, professor of Spanish at the University of Washington, set to music and sung in the original by the Spanish musician and philologist Paco Díez.
The poets included in the repertoire are from Spain, Latin America and include US Hispanics and a Sephardic poet who writes in Ladino.
In a presentation that lasts approximately 75 minutes, “Twelve Songs” offers the audience an intimate and moving insight into these great poets.
Poets
Rafael Alberti (Spain)
Rosario Castellanos (Mexico)
Rita Gabbaï-Simantov (Greece)
Federico García Lorca (Spain)
Luis García Montero (Spain)
Luis (Lucho) Hernández (Peru)
Raquel Lanseros (Spain)
Ada Limón (California)
Antonio Machado (Spain)
Mar Sancho (Spain)
Vanessa Torres (Colombia/California)
Fernando Valverde (Spain)
Brechemin Auditorium at the School of Music, 2023, February 1st (University of Washington) Seattle, E.E.U.U.
Paco Díez, from Piñel de Abajo (Valladolid, Spain), with a degree in Romance Philology (French major), and a producer, singer and self-taught musician, began his career in 1978, specializing mainly in the dissemination of Iberian musical culture, with his very personal voice, accompanied by the guitar, mandoline, hurdy-gurdy, bagpipes, flutes, dulcimer, rabel and percussion, in addition to his considerable ethnographic knowledge supported by rigorous fieldwork researching and recording traditional music throughout the Iberian Peninsula.
An enthusiast of traditional instruments, Paco Díez is the founder and curator of the Aula-Museo Paco Díez, which houses over 450 instruments from Spain, Portugal, Occitania (southern France) and the Magreb, as well as an important collection of bagpipes from around the world.
He is internationally acclaimed as one of the major exponents of both the Spanish Romancero and Sephardic music. Paco Díez was recognized in 2007 by the Autoridad Nasionala del Ladino in Israel for his work in performing and spreading Sephardic music. In 2015 he was invited by King Felipe VI to perform at an event in the Royal Palace in Madrid, in the presence of representatives of the Spanish government and Sephardic communities from throughout the world, during the historic act authorizing dual citizenship for Sephardic Jews 523 years after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. In 2016 he was nominated for the prestigious Premio Princesa de Asturias de las Artes for all these accomplishments.
In 2017 he was awarded the Medaille d’Argent et Palme in Paris by the Ligue Universelle du Bien Publique in recognition of his work in performing and teaching about Iberian and Sephardic music.
In 2017 and 2019 he was invited as Visiting Artist in Ethnomusicology at the University of Washington (Seattle), and in 2023 at the University of California, Santa Barbara (USA).
With more than 50 years under his belt he has recorded 19 DVDs and has performed, throughout Spain and numerous other countries across the world, more than 3500 solo concerts as well as with various groups he has organized.
Anthony L. Geist is a professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington, having taught previously at Princeton, the University of Texas (San Antonio) and Dartmouth College. He did his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of California, working summers as a heavy construction carpenter. He has published widely on Spanish and Latin American poetry, with an emphasis on the Generation of 27, the avant-garde and surrealism. His book, La poética de la generación del 27 y las revistas literarias: De la vanguardia al compromiso (1918-1936), is considered one of the foundational studies of the Silver Age of Spanish poetry.
In 2019 he edited and translated Rome, Pedestrians Beware by Rafael Alberti in a trilingual, illustrated edition. His numerous other books include Poética sin fronteras (2018), El canon abierto (2015), Cartografía poética (2004) and Guillén on Guillén (1979), as well as his edition of the complete poetry of Julio Vélez, Materia y sombra de la palabra (2012). Additionally, he has published over 60 articles in national and international journals, and has given over 200 lectures in conferences and universities throughout the world.
Geist has also worked in visual studies, curating numerous art exhibits, including an exhibit of children’s drawings from Spanish Civil War refugee camps that toured the US, Spain, Russia, Cuba and Puerto Rico. The catalogue, They Still Draw Pictures: Children’s Art in Wartime from the Spanish Civil War to Kosovo (2002) has been widely cited. In 2015 he organized an exhibit of the work of Basque exile painter Miguel Marina, “Iconos de la memoria,” in Bilbao and Bayonne. He co-directed and co-produced Souls without Borders a documentary film on the Lincoln Brigade (2006).
His translation of the Peruvian poet Lucho Hernández was a finalist for the PEN Prize in 2016. In that same year he was knighted in the Order of Isabella the Catholic Queen with the rank of Cruz de Oficial.