NEWS RELEASE

Contact: David West (west@nsula.edu )
News Bureau
Northwestern State University
Natchitoches, LA 71497
(318) 357-6466

3/12/2007

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

NATCHITOCHES - Soprano Bonnie Pomfret will present a lecture/recital at Northwestern State University Friday, March 16 at 7:30 p.m. in Magale Recital Hall. Admission is free and open to the public.

The lecture/recital is titled "A Dangerous Spark of Brilliance: Sor Juana, Mexico's 17th Century Muse, presented in Song." Pomfret will be accompanied by pianist Laura Gordy.

This interdisciplinary lecture-recital will appeal to those interested in women's studies, Latin American studies, and Spanish vocal music. Sor Juana Inéz de la Cruz (1651-95) was born near Mexico City in 1651 as the illegitimate child of a local landowner. At age eight, she began to dress as a boy so as to receive an education, a plan was doomed since women were not allowed an education. That she managed to arrange her adult life at a convent so that she could study and write was brilliant. That her work became known on the continent through the efforts of the viceroy proved dangerous when a new bishop was assigned and felt he needed to snuff out such rebellious sparks. Juana was forced to renounce her "inappropriate" literary aspirations and died several years later.

Pomfret became inspired by the poetry of Sor Juana during a stay in Spain in 1998 and was eager to sing musical settings of Sor Juana's poems, only to find none were then available. Pomfret commissioned American composer Libby Larsen to set Sor Juana's poems to music. The result is a timeless cycle of five songs, influenced by Spanish musical idiom.

The lecture recital will include: "Characteristics of Spanish Song" with performance of examples by Alfonso X, Granados, Nin-Culmell, and Obradors, Inspiration from Sor Juana, her life and poetry and Larsen's cycle of Sor Juana Songs from inception to recording, with performance of the cycle.

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