Series of events in Avilés

Participation of artists to the Fifty-Fifty Festival of Jazz and Poetry

The Fifty-Fifty Jazz and Poetry Festival is a unique non-for profit event in the current musical and literary scene, that mixes jazz and poetry, but also gender equality participation of artists, which first edition took place between 18th and 21st November 2021.

In that framework, 4 activities took place with the Support of wom@rts, namely:

• Concert of Viktorija Pilatovic

Lithuanian artist, jazz singer, composer, bandleader, and educator sharing her love for jazz through her original music: poetic lyrics, modern heart grasping chord progressions, and virtuosic vocal performance. Artist of the “Inner Circle Music” record label with three releases: “The Only Light” 2019, “Stories” 2017, and “Nica’s Blues” 2013, all featuring original compositions. Her music is covered in NPR live sessions, Downbeat magazine, Discopolis Radio 3, and many others.

Alongside Sílvia Pérez Cruz her voice sounds on “Voces” – the latest big band album of renowned Spanish saxophonist Perico Sambeat.

Viktorija participated in productions with Gilberto Gil, Michael League (Snarky Puppy), Banda Magda, and Petros Klampanis. 

Day: Saturday 20th November, 1:00 pm

Place: Factoría Cultural theatre, Avilés

• Masterclass of Viktorija Pilatovic

Lithuanian artist, jazz singer, composer, bandleader, and educator Viktorija Pilatovic taught jazz vocal performance at Universidad San Francisco de Quito College of Music in Ecuador, and is Assistant Professors at Berklee Valencia and Musikene in San Sebastian. She also teaches at various International Jazz seminars.

In the framework of her participation in the Fifty-Fifty Jazz & Poetry Festival, with the Support of Wom@rts project, she gave a Masterclass for vocalists.

Day: Saturday 20th November 2021, 5:00 pm

Place: Julian Orbón Conservatory of Music of Avilés City Council

• ¿Poesía eres tú? (Poetry, aren’t you?) – Workshop

Pepa Merlo, author of the anthology “Peces en la tierra” (a tribute to hidden Spanish women poets from the early XXth Century) and her musicians  organised a workshop for youngsters (between 8-12 years old) to transport them to the poetic world of the classics, mixing guitar chords, rhythm, verse, and voice and healthy and elegant humor. The session closed with a rhyme workshop.

Day: Sunday 21^st November 2021, 11:30 am

Place: Julian Orbón Conservatory of Music of Avilés City Council

• “Verses from another time. Women poets of the Generation of 27.” (poetic-musical show / Spanish music)

Poetic-musical show, based on the excellent anthology of women poets around the Generation of 27: “Peces en la tierra” by the author Pepa Merlo published in Vandalia in 2010, with the participation of the author herself as narrator in the proposed show.

This project has a particularity and a very special objective: to extol and vindicate the work of the women poets who actively formed the so-called Generation of 27. Women who had a very important role in the cultural and social sphere of the time, with a literary quality equal or superior in some cases to his fellow poets and unfortunately many of them and much of his work were relegated to oblivion without being barely mentioned in the different anthologies published on the subject.

Day: Sunday 21^st November, 5:00 pm

Place: Factoría Cultural theatre, Avilés

Avilés 2021 Black Night

Throughout the night of Friday 26^th November 2021, Avilés celebrated the 10^th edition of its cultural “Black Night”, with the role, place and visibility of women artists as the core topic of the event.

Over 20 activities, shows, workshops, etc. have taken place, mostly at Factoría Cultural and at different venues across the city, among them and closely linked to Wom@rts:

Afghan women and artists were present in the street with the reinterpretation of the work of graffiti artist Shamsia Hassani, made by seven Asturian artists, as well as with the reading of the manifesto ‘Threads’, a solidarity video performance with the women and girls of that country, and the workshop ‘Soplos de Libertad’, both with the collaboration of the NGO.

The students of the Higher School of Art have vindicated, for their part, the forgotten women artists of the Bauhaus, after the Nazi repression, thanks to the exhibition-tribute called ‘Luces’ (Lights). Or the development of the collective work ‘Tejido Humano’, of the Berde art and social transformation project, promoted from Asturias by María Sol Álvarez Yenes and a multidisciplinary team, which vindicates the creativity of people with intellectual disabilities.

All this is added to proposals such as the workshop ‘¿Esa soy yo? (Am I this girl?)’,by artist Mikha-ez, who questions identities through the selfies and filters used in personal images; or the video performance ‘I only know that I don’t know how to swim’, by Cristina Busto, together with different workshops to encourage audience co-participation.

Date: 26^th November 2021, all night

Place: Avilés (streets, squares, cultural venues and, above all, Factoría Cultural)

Wom@rts Closing concert in Avilés: Pamela Tan-Nicholson and the “Baltic Neopolis Ladies Orchestra”

To conclude and celebrate Avilés participation to Wom@rts, and showcase the works of women musicians, the City Council is organising a special concert of pianist and conductor Pamela Tan-Nicholson and the “Baltic Neopolis Ladies Orchestra”

UK based artist Pamela Tan-Nicholson is at once both a traditionalist and a composer in the new mould. She is known for being creatively and commercially successful at combining multiple genres, multiple disciplines and multi-cultural influences in her works which are essentially rooted in the rules of classical music. Her body of work covers film, television, live performance, chart-topping records and as well special commissions, ranging from the Reunification of Hong Kong to China to the Olympics, Summer and Winter.

Date: Tuesday 21^st December 2021, 8:30 pm

Place: Palacio Valdés Theatre, Avilés