XII Alfonso | en

X Alfonso is a Cuban musician whose work is difficult to classify into a genre, as it blends elements of rock, jazz, funk, hip-hop and electronica with traditional Cuban music. He was born in Havana in 1972 and is a graduate of the prestigious Escuela Superior de Arte de La Habana. Aside from composing, he sings and plays the bass and keyboards/piano, as well as creating his own video art. In the 1990s he was a key member of the legendary Cuban group Síntesis, led by his parents Carlos Alfonso and Ele Valdés. His first solo album Mundo Real was...

Nostalgia for the friends who are not here anymore, a kiss to the city, a reverence for the most popular street character of Havana, a complaint, a protest, a love gift, a laugh: are some of the ingredients of Gerardo Alfonso’s songs, a musician who manages to talk about sadness and happiness with the same intensity. Since he started to compose and play, accompanied by a guitar in the 80’s, he became an idol of the young university people and of the followers of the songs that make people think, Alfonso has not done anything else than to sing to...

Alfonso X (November 23, 1221, Toledo, Spain – April 4, 1284, Seville, Spain) was a Spanish monarch who ruled as the King of Galicia, Castile and León from 1252 until his death. He was elected Rex Romanorum in 1254. His nicknames were "el Sabio" ("the Wise", more accurately translated "the Learned") and "el Astrólogo" ("the Astrologer"). Among the most important of the works by Alfonso X was the celebrated Cantigas de Santa Maria ("Songs to the Virgin Mary"), one of the largest collections of monophonic songs to survive from Medieval times. The Cantigas de Santa Maria consists of 420 poems...

Alfonso Ferrabosco (Alfonso Ferrabosco (I); his son, Alfonso Ferrabosco the younger was also a composer) (baptised 18th January 1543 – 12th August 1588) was an Italian composer. While mostly famous as the solitary Italian madrigalist working in England, and the one mainly responsible for the growth of the madrigal there, he also composed much sacred music. He also may have been a spy for Elizabeth I while he was in Italy. Little is known about his early life, but he is known to have spent part of it in Rome and part in Lorraine in the service of Charles of...