Sound Anthology: Program Notes - IA de Investigación especializada en el MIT

Antología sonora: Notas del programa

Recent Perspectives on Latin
American Computer Music

Notes by the Curators,
Rodrigo F. Cádiz and
Federico Schumacher

Electroacoustic music has a long and
rich tradition in Latin America, de-
spite the many instances of political
and economic turbulence that the
region has experienced throughout
its existence. Without much public
or private support, composers such as
Maurico Kagel, Reginaldo Carvalho,
Jorge Antunes, José Vicente Asuar,
Juan Amenabar, Juan Blanco, Car-
los Jiménez Mabarak, and Franciso
Kröpfl, among many others, estab-
lished the foundations of what is now
a vibrant and active Latin American
computer music community. Ricardo
Dal Farra’s article in this special is-
sue, which we encourage the reader
to visit, provides a profound and im-
portant account of the development
of this genre in the region.

One interesting fact to emphasize

is that, in an era when commu-
nications were not as rapid and
abundant as they are today, el tiempo
gap between the first European com-
positions of musique concrète and
electronic music and their Latin
American counterparts was not very
largo. The first Latin American works,
created by Kagel, date from the early
1950s, and in 1956 the first Chilean
and Brazilian pieces were composed.
Este, we believe, is evidence sug-
gesting that the history and advances
of this genre in the Latin American
regions are as rich and important as
the better-known European or North
American equivalents.

Another important aspect of the
computer music of Latin America

doi:10.1162/COMJ_e_00643
© 2023 Instituto de Massachusetts de
Tecnología.

is that, even though there is some
dispersión, there are some countries
that concentrate the majority of the
activities and creation around this
genre. Computer music from Perú,
Ecuador, Paraguay, Bolivia, or Central
American countries is much less
abundant than music from Brazil,
Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Colombia,
México, Venezuela, or Uruguay. Y
this unequal distribution is probably
more pronounced in the case of com-
puter music research and academic
institutions that include this genre in
their educational programs.

This anthology presents a se-
lection of some of the most signif-
icant works that were submitted
to and presented at the Electro-
acoustic Music Festival at Pontificia
Universidad Católica de Chile, un
annual event that has been orga-
nized by the university since 2015.
Rodrigo F. Cádiz was a founder of this
festival and directed it until 2021, y
Federico Schumacher was part of the
juror and artistic panels on several
occasions. The first edition of the
festival, en 2015, was dedicated only
to Chilean composers. In the subse-
quent editions, an open call for Latin
and Hispanic American works has
been the norm, and the selection of
obras, besides some exceptions and
curated concerts, is based on a rigor-
ous evaluation of a jury of established
Chilean and guest composers.

The works included in this an-
thology were chosen based on their
quality, in terms of the scores they
obtained in the juror panels, and also
considering the composers’ countries
of origin. The works’ descriptions
below were written by the com-
posers themselves and have been
only slightly edited, leaving them
as long or short as the composers
determined. All music is presented
in a stereo format, even though the
majority of the selection was initially
composed for multichannel systems.
This selection contains music from

Argentina, México, Colombia, Brasil,
Chile, and Venezuela.

Rocío Cano Valiño: “Pyxis”

“Pyxis” (2015) is a multichannel
electroacoustic work composed for a
quadraphonic system. The piece takes
as its conceptual basis the idea of
searching for the north and stability.
In Latin, pyxis means “compass.”

In the piece, each section begins

with a development process that
is based on a sine wave (or a bowl
sound), which corresponds to the
moment when the “north” stabilizes.
También, each time a new section starts,
the elements are unstable following
a stabilization process. At the be-
ginning of the work, there is more
reverberation. In contrast to that, en
another part, nonreverberant sounds
predominate until the climax, él tiene-
gous to the needle when a compass is
stabilized.

“Pyxis” was commissioned by
Festival Bahía[en]sonora 2015 y
received its premiere at the Teatro
Municipal Bahía Blanca (Provincia de
Buenos Aires, Argentina).

Track Duration: 07:08

Rocío Cano, born in Argentina
en 1991, is a composer and interior
designer. Cano’s musical production
is dedicated to instrumental, mezclado,
and electroacoustic pieces. Ella es
a member of the artistic commit-
tee of the Ensemble Orbis, cual
is based in Lyon and which she
co-founded. Cano’s music has been
performed by ensembles such as
Proxima Centauri, HANATSUmirror,
Paramirabo, Ensemble Ars Nova, y
Duo PARCOURS. She collaborated as
a scenographer and 3-D designer on
the opera Qu’est-ce que l’amour? por
composer Demian Rudel Rey.

She is currently pursuing her
master’s degree in contemporary

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Cifra 1. Rocío Cano. (Photo by
Jean-Baptiste García. Used with
permission.)

composition at the Conservatoire
National Supérieur de Musique et
de Danse (CNSMD) in Lyon, dónde
she studies with François Roux.
She also takes classes with Martín
Matalon and Luca Antignani. Cano
obtained a DNSPM in composition
at CNSMD in Lyon, a bachelor’s
degree in musicology at the Univer-
sité Lumière Lyon 2, and a Diplôme
d’Études Musicales (DEM) in electro-
acoustic composition with Stéphane
Borrel at the Conservatoire à Rayon-
nement Régional (CRR) of Lyon. En
Argentina, she studied composition
with Demian Rudel Rey.

She has received various com-
missions: Aide à l’écriture du Min-
istère de la Culture, France Musique
“Création Mondiale,” residency at
the Groupe de Recherches Musi-
cales (GRM) with a premiere at
the Festival Présences 2020 en el
Maison de la Radio, Studio Césaré
(Centres Nationaux de Création
Musicale, CNCM), Société des Au-
teurs, Compositeurs et Éditeurs de
Musique (SACEM), Office Artistique
de la Région Nouvelle-Aquitaine
(OARA), Fondo Nacional de las
Artes, Bahía[en]sonora Festival, y
Ibermúsicas.

Cano’s works have received dis-
tinctions from the Destellos Foun-

dación, Musicworks, and the Luigi
Russolo Award, among others. Cano’s
compositions have been selected and
performed in various festivals around
the world such as Festival Mixtur,
the Center for Experimental Mu-
sic and Intermedia (CEMI) Circles,
and the San Francisco Tape Music
Festival.

En 2017, Resterecords released her
first monographic album, “Tâches.”
Cano’s music is published by Babel
Scores, Taukay Edizioni Musicali,
and Phas.e, among others. La Lettre
du Musicien published her “Portrait
double vie” written by Antoine
Pecqueur in the “Architecture”
edition in 2020.

Website: www.rociocanovalino

.com

Iván Ferrer-Orozco: “Contrabass”

The work arises from the following
quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice
through the Looking Glass, capítulo
3, “Looking-Glass Insects”:

Sin embargo, this was anything but
a regular bee: in fact it was an
elephant—as Alice soon found
afuera, though the idea quite took
her breath away at first. “And
what enormous flowers they
must be!” was her next idea.
“Something like cottages with
the roofs taken off, and stalks put
to them—and what quantities of
honey they must make!"

The work is built entirely with
small fragments of other recordings
of passages of pieces for solo double
bass but reproduced and recorded
in reverse. I was curious as to what
small snippets of previous recordings
would sound like if played back this
way. To my surprise, I discovered that
seemingly uninteresting elements
took on much richer sonic value
when played back like this. As in
Alice’s vision, things appear to be

algo, but through the looking
glass nothing is what it appears to be.

Track Duration: 04:56

Iván Ferrer-Orozco, born in
Mexico City in 1976, is a com-
poser, electronic media performer,
and sideman. In his work, he makes
extensive use of electronic media to
create music that is a mix of dynamic
and physical forces that flow and
expandir. Highly influenced by the use
of electronic tools in turntablism,
plunderphonics, clubbing, hip-hop,
ruido, and free improvisation, he in-
corporates resources from that music
and others also important to him
(death metal, punk, free jazz, early
alternativa, progressive rock, funk,
etc.), plus analog studio techniques in
the digital domain to design musical
gardens or heterotopias.

En 2021, the International Com-

puter Music Association (ICMA)
presented Iván Ferrer-Orzoco with
the ICMA Best Music Award. Él
has been an artist in residence in in-
ternational institutions, como el
Akademie der Künste, the MacDow-
ell Colony, and the Goethe-Institut,
among others. His music has been
extensively performed in festivals and
concert series across the Americas,
Europa, and Asia.

An active performer specializing
in electronic media, he performs as a
soloist and collaborates as a sideman
with other artists and ensembles
from Spain and abroad. En 2019, él
was named a Member of the Sistema
Nacional de Creadores de Arte, a
national program of the Mexican
government awarded to outstanding
artists of all disciplines. Él era
a member of the Neopercusion
ensemble for eight years and is
currently a member of the electronic
media band The Experimental Tooth,
the Synergein Project, and the Vertixe
Sonora Ensemble.

Antología sonora: Notas del programa

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Cifra 2. Ana María Romano G.
(Photo by Jean-Baptiste García.
Used with permission.)

Website: noesbarco.wixsite.com/

ivanferrer

Ana María Romano G.:
“posdomingo 02.10.2016”

The work was composed in my
personal studio in Bogotá, Colom-
bia, for the inaugural concert of the
SPECTRA Festival in 2016, cual
consisted of works created for the
German accordionist Eva Zöllner in
a mixed format. I originally com-
posed “posdomingo 02.10.2016” for
accordion and eight-channel fixed
media, but with the passing of time, I
decided that the fixed media could be
an independent work, también.

The piece was composed after
the day that the peace deal made
between the Colombian government
and the Revolutionary Armed Forces
of Colombia (FARC), was defeated in
a referendum (Octubre 2, 2016). Fue
my sad surprise to receive the news
eso, with very few votes and after a
campaign full of deceptions and lies,
the “No” option won.

The program notes for the premiere

were a few words that I transcribe
abajo:

Key words: Indolence. Abandon-

mento. Doctrine. Manifestation.
Fear.

Tags: Sadness. Dolor. Arrogance.
Unrest. Hopelessness. Limbo.
Instability. Hope. Cynicism.
Handling. Scam. Rage. God.
Fuerza. Exclusion. Ideology.
Monster. Silence. Fear. Mem-
ory. Empty.

For this work, I started from
the idea of working collaboratively
with Eva Zöllner. We focused on
sharing sound recordings made by
a nosotros: soundscapes of Bogotá, CDMX,
Berlina, and São Paulo. Her cat and
my dogs. Her accordion. Histórico

recordings of politicians murdered
during the Colombian armed conflict.
The sounds that are “clean,” with-

out obvious signal processing, went
through meticulous, delicate, y
subtle editions that were not guided
by the macro timbral transforma-
tion but rather open multiple layers
in which different spatialities and
temporalities meet and link.

For a concert performance, Zöll-
ner’s participation is improvisational,
dialoguing with the fixed media.

Track Duration: 07:36

Ana María Romano G., born in
Colombia in 1971, is a composer
and interdisciplinary sound artist.
Her creative interests center around
acoustic and electroacoustic media
and participation in interdisciplinary
projects involving contemporary
dance, video dance, actuación,
and live arts. Her creative interests
stem from the intersection of gender,
sound and technology, escuchando,
soundscape, ruido, experimentation,
improvisation, cyberspace, body,
and the political dimension of the
creative. Her artistic works have been
featured in festivals and published in
physical form and by several Internet

labels in Latin America, Europa,
North America, and Asia.

Her interest in documentation led

her to produce several publications
such as CDs and multimedia, mag-
azinas, and web platforms. She has
been working on the legacy of the
reference Colombian electroacoustic
composer Jacqueline Nova since
1999, and she curated the 2017 sound
installation “Jacqueline Nova. El
mundo maravilloso de las máquinas”
(Jacqueline Nova: The Wonderful
World of Machines) for the Museo de
Arte Moderno de Medellín (Medellin
Modern Art Museum). She has also
collaborated in the dissemination
of Nova’s legacy inside and outside
Colombia in creation, investigación, y
publication projects. In a parallel
way, she advances an investigation
of the protagonist-referents of Latin
American electronic music.

Romano G. has organized numer-

ous events throughout her career
devoted to the diffusion of current
creations (concerts, seminars, trabajar-
shops, etc.) characterized by the
presence of artists from different
countries, and she has been an artist
in residence at the Centro Mexicano
para la Música y las Artes (CMMAS).
Actualmente, she teaches at Univer-
sidad El Bosque and Universidad de
Antioquia. She is the coordinator of
the Plataforma Feminista En Tiempo
Real (Feminist Platform in Real Time)
dedicated to the encounter between
sound and technology with a focus
on women and LGBTQ+ individuals.
She has been nominated for the Clas-
sical Next Innovation Award 2019
(Holanda) for making visible the work
of women in the field of experimental
sound creation with technologies
through the Festival En Tiempo Real.
She is cofounder and one of the co-

ordinators of the Paisajistas Sonoras
América Latina (Women Soundscape
Artists of Latin America) con el
Peruvian soundscaper and researcher

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Cifra 3. Levy Oliveira. (Photo
by Levy Oliveyra. Used with
permission.)

Cifra 4. Felipe Otondo. (Photo
by Felipe Otondo. Used with
permission.)

to refer to temporal relationships
between any of the subdividing parts
in gamelan performance as well as
tempo in general. The work explores
notions of pulse and microrhythmic
structures using a set of recordings of
various types of Javanese gamelan or-
chestra as a timbral framework. El
purpose of the piece was to inves-
tigate distinctive rhythmic features
of traditional gamelan music using
the unique timbral explorations of
electronic music and spatial design
tools to create a sense of distance
and perspective in the mix. The work
is inspired by various rhythmic and
timbral relationships between subdi-
viding parts of the gamelan orchestra
and structured as a surreal jour-
ney across distant lands where the
gamelan plays an important religious
role.

“Irama” was composed in the
electronic music studios at Lancaster
University in the UK using gamelan
samples collected at the University
of York.

Track Duration: 9:33

Felipe Otondo, born in 1975 en
Chile, is a composer and researcher
based in Valdivia, Chile. He studied
acoustics in Chile, and later com-
position at the University of York
in England with Ambrose Field and
Roger Marsh, focusing on electro-
acoustic music, sound installations,
and music theater. His music has been
played in festivals across Asia, Eu-
rope, and North and South America.
He has received various international
awards and prizes at composition
competitions such as the Cittá di
Udine International Composition
Competition (2008 y 2013), el
Qwartz Radio France Award (2012),
and the Chilean National Innovation
Award (2019). He is currently an
associate professor and director of the
Arts and Technology Lab (LATe) en

Vanessa Valencia Ramos and inte-
grates the Red de Compositoras Lati-
noamericanas (Latinamerican Com-
posers Network) and GexLat Género
Experimentación Latinoamérica
(GexLat Gender Experimentation).
She develops her artistic and teaching
work regularly at events inside and
outside Colombia.

Website: soundcloud.com/

anamariaromano

Levy Oliveira: “Reminiscences”

The piece is a reflection on life itself.
The music acts as if the listener were
inside the mind of someone close
to death who is recalling important
moments of life, such as childhood,
sexual experiences, parties, trabajar,
and death. The piece uses recorded
and synthesized sounds to suggest
all these environments, sometimes
clearly and sometimes blurred, illus-
trating passages of life that almost
everyone can relate to.

“Reminiscences” was composed

at the composer’s personal home
studio and at the Research Center for
Contemporary Music at the Federal
University of Minas Gerais (Brasil).

composition since 2010. His music
is played frequently in Brazilian and
international festivals, and it has
also received awards in competitions
in Brazil and abroad. In his creative
trabajar, Levy Oliveira aims to under-
stand how listeners react to music
and how their expectations are built
to confirm or deny it a posteriori.
Por lo tanto, the study of psychological
terms such as habituation and pro-
cessing fluency has been a rich source
of information to be explored in his
música. Electronics are often applied
as a way of breaking expectations,
increasing the spatial and timbral
possibilities available to surprise the
listeners. Sin embargo, he has com-
posed for instrumentations ranging
from acousmatic pieces to solo in-
struments, cámara, and orchestral
música.

Oliveira teaches at the Faculdade
de Música do Espírito Santo (FAMES).
Website: www.levyoliveira.com

Felipe Otondo: “Irama”

Track Duration: 8:16

Levy Oliveira, born in Brazil in

1993, has been studying musical

In Javanese gamelan music, “Irama”
has the general meaning of a time in-
terval between two successive sounds
or actions. The term can also be used

Antología sonora: Notas del programa

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Cifra 5. Mirtru Escalona-Mijares.
(Photo by Aude Paget. Used with
permission.)

Universidad Austral de Chile. Su
music is published by Sargasso
Records.

Website: otondo.net

Mirtru Escalona-Mijares:
“L’ermitage au toit de chaume”

This piece is a modest tribute to
the Buddhist monk Ry ¯okan (1758–
1831) and to the impression left by
some of his poems. “L’ermitage au
toit de chaume” takes as a starting
point the poetic image of five tankas
(rhymeless Japanese poems consisting
de 31 syllables spread over 5 líneas)
written by Ry ¯okan during various
periods of his life.

vous me demandez
où se trouve
ma demeure?
à l’est du pont
au-dessus du fleuve d’étoiles
– — — — — — — –
si on me demande comment
j’ai pu renoncer au désir
sous le ciel
quand la pluie tombe, elle tombe
quand le vent souffle, il souffle
– — — — — — — –
un long moment
sous le ciel parfumé
d’ivresse affalé
un rêve merveilleux
au pied du cerisier en fleurs
– — — — — — — –
la rosée s’est déposé
le sentier de la montagne doit

être froid

une dernière coup de saké
avant de rentrer
peut-être?
– — — — — — — –
comme un mince filet d’eau
se frayant un passage entre des

rochers

couverts de mousse
aussi allègrement
j’ai traversé cette vie

This work was commissioned by
the Institut National de l’Audiovisuel
and the Groupe de Recherches Mu-
sicales (INA-GRM) and received
its premiere on 25 Enero 2015 en
Multiphonies 2014-15: Akousma,
Auditorium Saint-Germain—Maison
des Pratiques Artistiques Amateurs
(MPAA), París (Francia). It has received
two awards: first prize at the ninth
biennial acousmatic composition
competition Métamorphoses (Brus-
sels, Bélgica, 2016) and second prize
ex æquo at Semaine Internationale
de Musique Electroacoustique (Lille,
Francia, 2019).

Track Duration: 15:24

Mirtru Escalona-Mijares, born
in Venezuela in 1976, had his first
contact with music in Duaca, dentro
“El Sistema,” a national system of
youth orchestras. He completed his

first musical training with Rafael
Saavedra and Gerardo Gerulewicz,
before returning to France at the in-
vitation of José Manuel López-López
and Paul Méfano. En 2000, he con-
tinued his training with Philippe
Leroux, Ivan Fedele, and Christine
Groult, then completed his studies
with a master’s degree in composition
(option for electroacoustic and com-
puter music) at the Conservatoire
National Supérieur de Musique et
Danse de Lyon, in the class of Robert
Pascal, Michele Tadini, and Denis
Lorrain.

For Escalona-Mijares, the craft
of composition has become a con-
tinuous self-discovery and a tool to
react to the contemporary world.
His works reflect in an authentic,
poético, and spiritual way this par-
ticular relationship to music and its
ambiente.

As an artist, he invites the audi-
ence to dream and to broaden their
musical listening limits to bring
them closer to the “nontangible” that
connects us all. Strongly attracted by
electronics, he incorporates them as
a logical extension of acoustic instru-
mentos, and his work is imbued with
digital art and non-Western music
as a source of reflection and aware-
ness of diverse perceptions of the
world.

He has received multiple interna-

tionally recognized awards, incluir-
ing the Simon Bolivar University
Award, the first prize in the Kuhmo
International Composition Compe-
tition, and the Earplay Donald Aird
Composers Competition.

He works regularly with highly
recognized ensembles, músicos,
and festivals.

Website: soundcloud.com/mirtru

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