ThisIsNotAMusicBreak: Rodrigo Cuevas

The Spanish Agency for International Development and Cooperation (AECID) and the Embassies of Spain in Berlin, Brussels, Lisbon, New York, Tokyo and Washington, DC present the digital project #ThisIsNotAMusicBreak, a series of collaborations between Spanish artists and artists from other countries, in video-clip format, incorporating music, dance and avant-garde performance.

#ThisIsNotAMusicBreak is a project of the AECID’s Window Programme: A Window on Spanish Culture, with the aim of continuing to promote – despite the difficulties imposed by the current pandemic – the internationalisation of Spanish artists, creators and cultural industries, working in networks and mainly through digital media.

The first piece in the series #ThisIsNotAMusicBreak is Carceleras de « Barbián »: Zarzuela-Kabarett, in which Fernando Carmena directs, exclusively for the AECID’s Programa Ventana, the impressive performance by Rodrigo Cuevas, with arrangements by the German Frank Merfort and the Dutch Richard Veenstra. This is a contemporary reinterpretation, a liberating and radical musical transfiguration of the piece « Carceleras », originally composed by Ruberto Chapí in 1885 for the zarzuela « El país del abanico » and later adapted for « Las hijas del Zebedeo ». (1889). The video-clip « Carceleras » is part of the production of the show « BARBIÁN: ZARZUELA-KABARETT », and was recorded during Rodrigo’s confinement in his Asturian farmhouse and Merfort and Veenstra in Berlin.