Groupmuse, in partnership with Sonit Out and MÔTÔ Spirits, presents
Voces: New Music from Latin America
produced and performed by Emily Duncan
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The Program
Momentum — Jonathan Figueroa
Borderline — Jean Angelus Pichardo
Homenaje a Johnny Pacheco — Rodrigo Martínez Torres
y + o — Gabriel José Bolaños
Lumbre de Amor — Jamey Guzman
Diptera — Axel Retif
Romeo from “Suite Latino Americana” — Horacio Fernández Vázquez
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The Notes
Momentum is a work that attempts to evoke the feeling of trying to reach the state of flow, striving to get “momentum” at any activity in life. The piece develops from mostly non-focused sounds, these sonorities struggle to find their way, sometimes almost reaching the point, until finally, the music reaches “the momentum” which translates to fully focused sounds, long and rhythmic phrases that keep their one way. Once on that point, the music, as in life, flows. —Jonathan Figueroa
Borderline for flute and electronics is based on Borderline personality disorder (BPD), a serious mental illness marked by unstable moods, behavior, and relationships. People with this disorder also have high rates of cooccurring disorders, substance abuse, and eating disorders, along with self-harm, suicidal behaviors, and completed suicides. The piece takes us through brief different moods of a person with sever BPD, going across extreme reactions including panic, depression, rage, or frantic actions related with problems with regulating emotions and thoughts, impulsive and reckless behavior and unstable relationships with other people. —Jean Angelus Pichardo
Homenaje a Johnny Pacheco, as its title suggests, is a homage to a cornerstone in the development of the Latin American dance genre known as salsa: Johnny Pacheco. It is a psychedelic journey into a futuristic past. The flute is fragmented into harmonic particles, as well as melodic fragments that at moments remind us of Pachecho's music, just to dissolve again into electronic textures. The electronic sounds that accompany the flute were generated with Pacheco's recordings, as well as his flute melodies and solos previously recorded by Emily Duncan. Structured around glimpses of the tropical material, the piece takes us from unisons that fragment into dissonant textures that evolve into a rhythmic section that reminds us of salsa, and it ends on a peaceful note, remembering the music of someone who brought Latin music forward. Remembering the future. —Rodrigo Martínez Torres
y + o (and + or), for amplified piccolo and electronics, explores various processes of bifurcation and fusion. Some of these are gradual (a unison gradually expands to a microtonal cluster, or a bell’s resonance gradually fuses into the timbre of the piccolo), and others are sudden. Occasionally, elements that bifurcate are fused on a more structural level: new elements adopt the behaviors of previous material. The amplification of the piccolo also reveals delicate, sotto voce sounds that are usually only audible to the performer. The electronics were derived from processing recordings of Emily Duncan playing the piccolo, and a few short samples of a Buchla modular synthesizer. Special thanks to Emily for collaborating on this piece, and to Sonit Music for commissioning this work. —Gabriel José Bolaños
Lumbre de Amor is based off of the old Salvadoran folk story El Carbonero, made popular by Pancho Lara’s song by the same name. The story is about a coal merchant who travels from his home in the mountains across the landscape of El Salvador, passing volcanos, mountains, forests, and open horizons. Sometimes there’s a little bit of danger, when he gets lost, or a bit of loneliness, when he passes another town like his—but he does eventually get to a market, where he sells this coal which he says creates “fire, light of love.”
On one hand the story is simple, but if you peel back the layers you can see why the song that popularized the story became like a second national anthem for El Salvador: it captures the coal merchant’s fondness for his country, and captures the spirit of a hardworking people.
I have a pretty good idea about this ‘spirit of a hardworking people,’ as all my life I have seen it in my dad, who himself is an immigrant from El Salvador. I started thinking about the idea of loving sacrifice for family and loved ones, and how he did that every day for me. I looked back at the song, and realized how closely those tenets of family, the home, and the hearth were woven into the story: how the coal isn’t just fire but also heat and warmth, and how he takes on this long journey, alone, getting lost in the “entangled horizons” in order to sell the coal at the market before coming back home to bring that warmth to his family.
When I called my dad and told him the project, and how I was trying to decide how I would approach the piece, he said that the song is a little like a children’s story, and read me the original song in Spanish—and suddenly I knew exactly what I was going to do with the piece. Hearing his voice reading took me right back to my earliest memories, of my dad and I reading together, teaching me how to read so many new words—making sure I knew how to pronounce “Prologue” every time it came up in the Jack and Annie books...
So when it all comes together, this is the story of the carbonero, yes – how he passes the volcano, the torogoz bird, the other towns – but it’s also a little bit about my dad, about family, about loving sacrifice. Every time a certain motive comes back, I imagine the carbonero thinking about his daughter, his family back at home; this is the motive of the sacrifice of the journey he takes willingly, so that his loved ones too can have coal, have lumbre de amor. And because of my dad, I gave the piece a Prologue, and an Epilogue—because in my retelling, this whole story is framed as the carbonero telling this story of his travels to his own daughter, once he gets back home. —Jamey Guzman
The voices of “voces: new music from latin america”
Flutist and producer Emily Duncan is an electrifying, theatrical performer redefining what it means to be an artist in today’s musical landscape. Through innovative costuming, elements of drag performance, and music that blends the classical, pop, and electronic genres, Emily is creating new musical experiences that live at the intersection of music, technology, theater, and art.
Emily has performed with The University of Iowa’s Center for New Music, The New Juilliard Ensemble, AXIOM, and the New York Summergarden Series and has worked with David Lang, Joel Sachs, Thomas Adés, and Kaija Saariaho. From 2013-2016, she toured across the United States, premiering new solo and ensemble works with the Center for New Music. In New York, she has performed in a wide array of venues such as The New York Transit Museum, MoMA, The New York Times Building, The Colony Club, and Alice Tully Hall. In 2020, she was the principal flutist on tour with the Ambient Orchestra for “Bowie Cello Symphonic: Blackstar”, a live performance of David Bowie’s final album. During the current Covid-19 outbreak, Emily partnered with the new music company OpusCommons to put on a virtual flute and tech recital. Emily holds a bachelor’s degree in music and a bachelor’s degree in English from The University of Iowa where she also completed her studies in the Undergraduate Creative Writing Program. She holds a Master of Music Degree from The Juilliard School.
Jonathan Figueroa (1987) is a Mexican composer, arranger, and pianist. His works have been premiered in Mexico, United States, Colombia, and Costa Rica by various orchestras and ensembles such as Brightwork newmusic, Hocket Ensemble, Argus Quartet, Los Angeles Percussion Quartet, Cuarteto José White, Orquesta Sinfónica de la UACH, Orquesta Sinfónica de la UAT, Orquesta Filarmónica de Chiapas, among others. As an arranger, he has collaborated with prominent musicians including the saxophonist Adrián Terrazas-González, Quinteto Saturnino, and the Orquesta Filarmónica de Boca del Río. His music seeks to explore different approaches using the necessary means to achieve what a specific work aims for. This may mean either setting off from stimulus of life events, incorporating elements from Mexican folk music, making use of various procedures such as minimalism, spectralism, serialism; or merging elements from other music genres like electronic music, rock, etc. Jonathan Figueroa has been selected in various forums including the Festival Internacional de Música de Cámara de Aguascalientes, Foro de Música Nueva Armando Luna, and his music has been performed at different festivals such as the Festival Camerata 21, Festival Internacional de Saxofón Zacatecas, International Trombone Festival, to name a few. Also, in 2015 he received the First Mention prize at the Fifth International Composition Competition “Nuestra América”. His composition path has been guided by Alan Shockley, Raymond Torres-Santos, Alexander Elliott Miller, Adriana Verdié, and Emil Awad. Likewise, he has received master classes and workshops from distinguished composers such as Ana Lara, Enrico Chapela, José Luis, Hurtado, Jorge Torres Sáenz, Robert Pollock, Tomoko Honda, Kalman Cseki, and Alejandro Corona. Jonathan Figueroa received his Bachelor of Music degree with emphasis in composition and piano from the Universidad Veracruzana and a Master of Music degree in composition from California State University, Long Beach.
Jean Angelus Pichardo is a composer and arranger who has worked on the creation and promotion of artistic projects. He has received grants and awards throughout his career primarily related to his choral music, chamber music, and electroacoustic works. Jean Angelus has collaborated with renowned ensembles and soloists such as Chicago a Capella, NYU New Music Ensemble, Tambuco Percussion Ensemble, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Túumben Paax, Iracema De Andrade, Esther Lamneck, among others; he has been a resident composer for VocalEssence, the Difrazzioni Multimedia Festival, the Mexican Center for Music and Sonic Arts (CMMAS) and multiple times of the Creators (FOCAEM) and Young Creators programs (FONCA). His work (which has been performed in Canada, the US, South America, Asia, and Europe) extends beyond purely concert music, including projects with electronics, sound arts, and collaborations with video and dance, with presentations at the Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival (Italy), the New York Electroacoustic Festival (EU), the Montréal Nouvelles Musiques Festival, the China International Choir Festival (Canada), the Fukushima Vocal Ensemble Competition (Japan), the International America Cantat Festival (Colombia), the International Cervantino Festival, the International Forum of New Music Manuel Enriquez, Latin American Video and Visual Arts Festival (Argentina), among others. His works can be heard on 10 professional recordings distributed by Clave and Urtext (Mexico). Jean Angelus holds a degree in Musical Composition from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), and is currently, studying for a Master in Music at the same institution.
Rodrigo Martínez Torres is a composer interested in the abstraction of the musical language of Latin America as a tool for new creations. He is also a multi-instrumentalist who performs in different genres and styles. He was born in Mexico City in 1992. He studied music composition in Academia de Arte de Florencia and in Núcleo Integral de Composición. He is currently studying a masters in electroacoustic composition in Centro Superior Katarina Gurska in Madrid, Spain. He was a grant holder in the Mexican program Jóvenes Creadores by FONCA in 2018-2019. And in October 2019 he was awarded a MacDowell Colony fellowship (New Hampshire, USA) .
He was the grand prize winning composer of the Dartmouth College Composition Competition 2020 with his piece 'Cumbia Moderna'. He won the 2017 Arturo Márquez composition competition with his piece 'Mambo Urbano', for chamber orchestra. And with 'Radio Ruido' he won the 2017 Caja de Viento Call for Scores, by german accordionist Eva Zöllner. Besides being a composer, he has played in different ensembles for the past years including Mexican Coro Delicieux, Orquesta Filarmónica del Nuevo Mundo, Kumpania, La Chinaca, Monstruos del Mañana and Supersilverhaze.
Gabriel José Bolaños Chamorro (b. 1984 Bogotá, Colombia) is a Nicaraguan-American composer of solo, chamber, orchestral and electroacoustic music. He frequently collaborates closely with performers, and enjoys writing music that explores unusual structures and timbres. He is interested in computer-assisted-composition, auditory perception, linguistics, graphic notation and modular synthesizers.
Bolaños is currently an Assistant Professor of Music Composition at Arizona State University, where he teaches courses in composition, analysis, music technology and acoustics, and serves as co-director of the PRISMS contemporary music festival. He received a BA in music from Columbia University and a PhD in Composition and Theory from UC Davis. Bolaños has received numerous awards and grants for his work, including a Fulbright US Scholar Grant, the Suzanne & Lee Ettelson Composer's Award, a research and development grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and a commission from CIRM and Festival Manca in Nice, France.
Jamey J Guzman is a composer, librettist, and artist-activist. In her music, Jamey often explores identity and interpersonal connection, philosophy and humanity, and the unashamed pursuit of wonder. A firm believer in the unmatched power of art to enact social change, she is dedicated to using her music to illuminate themes such as female empowerment, racial equity, climate action, gender and sexuality, and mental health awareness. Additionally, as a flute and piccolo specialist, Jamey is enveloped in the world of contemporary chamber music, and cites this deep exposure to a myriad of musical styles as a core inspiration in her own work. Jamey is deeply passionate about contemporary opera and vocal music, and strives to use the unique power of the human voice to tell necessary stories of today’s people with excitingly experimental and innovative techniques.
Jamey is a four-time alumna of Really Spicy Opera’s Aria Institute for Composers and Librettists, studying under Basil Considine, Anne Wieben, and Tess Altiveros. In addition, she is currently pursuing studies in composition and flute performance at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where her main professors have been Don Freund, Tansy Davies, and P.Q. Phan. Recently, Jamey’s work has been featured at the N.E.O. Voice Festival in Los Angeles, as well as at Really Spicy Opera’s concert at Fondation des États-Unis in Paris. This year, she has been commissioned by New Voices Opera for their 2022 mainstage, as well as by Strange Trace Opera for their 2022 Stencils Festival.
Axel Retif (Puebla, Mexico, 1992) is a composer and producer whose music has been played in various national and international festivals such as Foro Internacional de Música Nueva Manuel Enríquez, June in Buffalo Festival, Festival Expresiones Contemporáneas, Festival Aires Nacionales y Festival Armando Luna. Currently, he is composer in residence for Mushamukas Ensamble de Contrabajos where he is composing a piece for the ensemble in memoriam of Stefano Scodanibbio. His music has been performed by the Juanmanuel Flores, Wilfrido Terrazas, Cristian Coliver, Rodrigo Mata, Trío Siqueiros, Cuarteto Chroma, Cuarteto Ruvalcaba, Arditti Quartet, Slee Sinfonietta, and la Orquesta Sinfónica UACH. It has received various grants and scholarships such as the Programa Estímulos a la Innovación IMACP, PECDA Puebla y Fomento de las Músicas Iberoamericanas (IBERMÚSICAS). He has two monographic EP albums called “Sincronías” and “House of Flies”, under the record label Tagma Records.
Retif began his studies at the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Musicales (CIEM) where he took composition classes with Dr. Ana Paola Santillán. He subsequently graduated from LLCM - BA in Music Composition from the West London College of Music under Vincent Carver. He is currently studying his master's degree in music composition and theory at the University of New Mexico (UNM) in Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA with Dr. José Luis Hurtado. In addition to his career as a composer, he maintains an activity as artistic coordinator at the Festival Expresiones Contemporáneas, a festival focused on the production and dissemination of contemporary music.
Horacio Fernández Vázquez, who goes by the stage name Horatio on the Beat, is a classical composer by day and an urban music producer by night. He is also a passionate filmmaker, often directing music videos for his projects, as well as highly skilled songwriter, musical theater composer, lyricist, and writer. He also manages an online clothing store that feature designs from his projects. He is currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in composition at The Juilliard School of Music, class of ’22. He writes music that embraces and fuses urban and western classical traditions, particularly those coming from Latin America.
His music has been widely performed and acclaimed around the world by leading artists such as The Juilliard Orchestra, Zlatomir Fung, the Pittsburgh Ballet, Jeffrey Milarsky, the 5 de Mayo Philharmonic among many others. He has received commissions from Miguel Ángel Villanueva, Joel Sachs, Simón Gollo, the Albany Symphony, the University of Illinois and National Sawdust. He has won prestigious awards such as the Arturo Márquez Competition, the James Galway Festival Composer Competition and The Juilliard Composer’s Competition. He has also been a recipient of fellowships and grants that have allowed him to fund his entrepreneurial pursuits such as Mexico’s Culture Secretariat, National Sawdust’s Blueprint Fellowship, and Juilliard’s Marks Center on multiple occasions. His teachers and mentors include Robert Beaser, Alan Belkin, Gonzalo Macías and Arturo Márquez.