Jonatan’s Book Club: The Códice Zuola

Jonatan Alvarado [https://splendoramsterdam.com/en/musicians/jonatan-alvarado] presents MEMBER CONCERTA book from colonial Cuzco that I have spent years reading and transcribing, full of songs, poems, stories, funeral tariffs and miraculous syrups

After some years working on the music in the Códice Zuola, a commonplace book copied by Fray Gregorio Zuola at the end of the 17th century in Cuzco, Peru. Jonatan Alvarado has finally managed to read and transcribe the whole volume. It contains poetry, stories, documents that tell us how much a funeral cost in 17th-century Peru, prognostications of which days your astrological sign advises against seeing a doctor, and recipes for miraculously curative syrups. In this concert, Jonatan brings some of its stories, poems and love songs off the page and into the room, so that a book usually met in silence can be heard, for one evening, as sound. Chances are you will pick up a verse or two along the way.

Jonatan Alvarado, voice, baroque guitar

Photo Jonatan Alvarado: Xosei Durain

Member concert Splendor can only be the independent and free hub that it is, thanks to the members who support us. We pay them back with our specialty: music. Every year, all Splendor musicians play one concert that's free for this crucial group to whom Splendor owes its everyday existence. Combined with many other events, this means that our members have free entrance to over 50 concerts a year for €9,99 p/m (and €4,99 p/m for minima and students!) – and receive a discount for all other concerts. Pretty good deal, right?

The members enable Splendor to remain independent, which is the only way to secure real freedom in programming, experimentation, risk-taking and the promotion of young, upcoming artists. If you can think of another place without a central programming, where last-minute concerts can be planned any moment, where there is no backstage and artists and audience are constantly mingling and hanging out at the bar, where mysterious creative outbursts can be presented that are often labeled 'too risky' elsewhere, and that still guarantees high quality by unleashing the best of The Netherlands' music scene in this creative playground – you get a free membership!

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