Hilda Paredes at June in Buffalo

Continuing our alphabetical series of profiles of the Senior Faculty for June in Buffalo 2011, we encounter Hilda Paredes, who has achieved renown as one of Mexico's leading composers. Paredes was born in Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico, and has been a prominent music teacher at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). Firmly established as one of the leading Mexican composers of her generation, her music is now performed widely around the world.

As an active participant in master classes at Dartington Summer School, studied with Peter Maxwell Davies and Richard Rodney Bennett. After graduating at the Guildhall School of Music, she obtained her Master of Arts at City University in London and completed her PhD at Manchester University.

Her collaboration with choreographers led her to receive the Music for Dance Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1988. After taking part at the Garden Venture Opera Project in Dartington, she completed her first chamber opera "The Seventh Seed," released by Mode Records.

She has continued to be involved in the musical life of her native country, teaching at the National University in Mexico City, as radio producer of new music, as well as collaborating with the Orchestra of Baja California arranging traditional Spanish and Mexican songs.

  

Hilda now lives in London as a freelance composer, and has taught composition and lectured at Manchester University, the University of San Diego California, Mills College in California, as well as in Mexico, Spain, and Centre Acanthes in France. Her recently completed second chamber opera El Palacio Imaginado, commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte, English National Opera and the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, was premiered to much acclaim in both sides of the Atlantic.

Hilda Paredes has been commissioned by soloists, ensembles and orchestras around the world. Her music has been performed by internationally renowned ensembles such as Lontano, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten, Ensemble Sospeso and Arditti Quartet and has been widely performed at important international festivals, such as Huddersfield in the UK; Eclat in Germany; Musica and Octobre en Normandie, in France; Wien Modern, in Austria; Akiyoshidai Music Festival, in Japan; Archipel, in Geneva; De Ijsbreker Chamber Music Festival, in Amsterdam; Warsaw Autumn, in Poland; Ultima, in Oslo; Melbourne Festival, in Australia; Festival of Arts and Ideas in the USA, Ars Musica in Bruxelles; Festival de Alicante, in Spain; Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico, amongst others. 

Here's a clip of Misplaced Flowers, a ballet choreographed by Joel Valentin-Martinez in 2010 to Paredes's music, performed here by the noted Chicago-based ensemble Fulcrum Point.