site.btaSpanish Medieval Music Concert to Take Place in Sofia

Spanish musicians will perform a concert, titled "Sepharad in the Heart of Bulgaria", at the concert hall of the Prof Pancho Vladigerov National Academy of Music on November 11, the Cervantes Institute in Sofia announced.

The concert features singer Mara Aranda, who will be accompanied by Fernando Depiaggi (flutes, percussion), Julia Chiner Santapau (cello), Omran Adrah (qanun, santoor), and Milena Fuentes Merino (violin). The musicians will perform traditional works that have survived in the Sephardic community in Bulgaria.

The concert is part of the cultural events organized during the Spanish Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

During her visit to Bulgaria, Mara Aranda will record part of her repertoire to promote a new work. "Sepharad in the Heart of Bulgaria" is part of Aranda's music project, titled "Geographies of the Diaspora". It includes four other titles that meet the goal of bringing together the Sephardic oral music tradition in the Balkans and the Mediterranean basin - "Sepharad in the Heart of Morocco" (2017), "Sepharad in the Heart of Turkey" (2019), "Sepharad in the Heart of Greece" (2023) and "Sepharad in the Heart of Bosnia and Herzegovina" (to be announced). The first two albums were awarded by the Transglobal World Music List as the best European album of the year in their respective years of release.

Since 2020, Mara Aranda serves as director of the International Centre for Medieval Music in Valencia. She is a researcher, performer and disseminator of the medieval Mediterranean musical traditions with a special focus on Sephardic traditions and recovery of the works of medieval women composers. Together with specialist Hota Martinez, Aranda manages the largest private collection of medieval instruments in Europe. They have identified, catalogued and reconstructed more than 20 medieval instruments based on Romanesque and Gothic iconography and descriptions collected in manuscript texts of that time.