Mexico the City of Musical Palaces
Music between the theater and the Cathedral
in the second half of the 18th century
UNAM-Boston
Speakers:
Dr. Benjamín Juárez (director of UNAM-Boston)
Dr. Jesús Ramos-Kittrel (professor at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Connecticut)
Music, as an institutionalized activity, allowed musicians to seek social mobility in 18th century Mexico City. Poetry as an important component of musical culture in higher social circles underpinned the music with intellectual overtones that allowed to raise the status of musicians. Music, poetry, and literature were vehicles for the expression of elite values and sensibilities, which in turn allowed musicians to negotiate social positions in colonial Mexico City. Ignacio Jerusalem and Stella, between the theater and the Cathedral, in the midst of a social landscape that included European refinements, poverty and violence from marginalized groups is our starting point.
Benjamín Juárez Echenique
Benjamín Juárez Echenique, director of the Center for Mexican Studies of Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM) in Boston, is concurrently professor of Fine Arts and Arts and Leadership at Boston University. He is a member of the Center for Latin American Studies and the Center for the Study of Europe at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University. He serves as a member of the board of directors of Early Music America, a non-profit organization that develops, strengthens, and celebrates early music in the Americas. He studied music, opera, orchestral conducting and musicology at the National School of Music (ENM) of UNAM in Mexico, CalArts in the United States, and in several Schools and Conservatories in Europe.
He started his academic career at UNAM at the ENEP Acatlán and soon thereafter was appointed head of the Department of Music and Dance, both at UNAM. He has worked as staff conductor for the Symphonic Orchestra of the State of Mexico and Mexico City’s Philharmonic. He has been a guest conductor of some of the most prominent orchestras of Mexico, as well as in Europe, the United States and the People's Republic of China. He was the first Latin American conductor invited to perform in that country, with Shanghai’s Philharmonic.
As an administrator in the academic and cultural field, he was director of cultural activities at the Anahuac Sur University, and General Director of the National Center for the Arts, in fulfillment of Mexico’s Civil Service. He was the Director of Development and Institutional outreach for the Dr. José Ma. Luis Mora Institute, before being selected as Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at Boston University, a position he held for five years.
His career has been focused on the research and performance of Mexican and Hispanic music from the Middle Ages to the 21st century. His work on Mexican cathedral music, has produced more than twelve compact discs, published by the Mexican label Urtext Digital Classics, which have been reviewed in the USA and Europe, earning him a Latin Grammy nomination and the bestowal of the Mexico Unido Award.
%201.png)
Dr. Benjamín Juárez Echenique, (director of UNAM-Boston)
Dr. Jesús Ramos-Kittrell, (professor at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Connecticut)
Jesús A. Ramos-Kittrell
Jesús Ramos-Kittrell's work takes sound as a platform to analyze the articulation of cultural processes through determined socio-political structures. In these processes, Ramos-Kittrell identifies sound as a phenomenological tool with which individuals negotiate power relations that affect their political representation in the public sphere. His publications cover the period of early modernity in the Americas and cultural analyzes of globalization. Previously, Jesús Ramos-Kittrell has worked as a professor of Musicology and Ethnomusicology at Tulane University and Southern Methodist University. He is currently a professor at the School of Fine Arts of the University of Connecticut.