Hilda Paredes: Strings of Destiny

The Center for 21^st Century Music is delighted to announce that Hilda Paredes will be returning to June in Buffalo as a senior composer. One of the leading Latin American composers of her generation, her music has received awards from the Arts Council of Great Britain, Guggenheim and Rockefeller Foundations, and the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (FONCA) in Mexico, performances by Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Aventure, Ensemble Court Circuit, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Recherche, Ensemble Signal, London Sinfonietta, Lontano, The New Julliard Ensemble, Neue Vocalsolisten, L’Instant Donné, and English National Opera, at festivals such as Huddersfield, Edinburgh, Eclat, Ultraschall, Musica, Wien Modern, Akiyoshidai, Takefu, Archipel, De Ijsbreker, Warsaw Autumn, Ultima, Melbourne, Ars Musica Festival de Alicante, and Festival Internacional Cervantino. She has held teaching positions at Manchester University, University of San Diego California, Centre Acanthes, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, and Mills College (as the prestigious Darius Milhaud Visiting Professor).

Paredes’s upcoming visit to the Center is not the first. Her music and pedagogy has been met with high praise on previous visits: at June in Buffalo in 2011 and 2014, and as a guest on the Center’s visiting artist series in 2017. Her past appearances included a performance of her violin concerto Señales by Irvine Arditti (violin soloist) and Signal Ensemble—for whom the piece was written—as well as additional performances of her work by Norrbotten NEO and the Center’s own Slee Sinfonietta. With this programming, the Center not only supports the growth of existing collaborative relationships—for instance between Paredes, Arditti, and Signal—but also facilitates the formation of new partnerships—as with Norrbotten NEO and the Slee Sinfonietta’s performances of Paredes’s music; together, these opportunities contribute to the health of broader artistic ecosystems.

This year’s festival will present a total of four Paredes works for soloists and chamber ensembles, in addition to a public lecture (Friday, June 8 at 10am in Baird Hall) by the composer. This year’s festival will perform a total of four Paredes works for soloists and chamber ensembles. Each work will be performed by a different ensemble, providing a unique way to learn about different ensembles’ approaches to performing music by the same composer. Beginning on Tuesday, June 5 at 7:30pm in Baird Hall, the MIVOS Quartet will perform Cuerdas del Destino, the composer’s second string quartet. As the title implies, “the concept of consequence is the principle from which all materials develop by creating the direction, dramaturgy and structure of the work…The dramatic treatment of these three materials sets up the principles which will develop throughout the piece.”

Following this, on Thursday, June 7 at 7:30pm in Baird Hall, Irvine Arditti will perform In Memoriam Thomas Kakuska, a violin solo commemorating the composer’s close friend, the violist of the Alban Berg Quartet, while another solo piece, Chaczidzib for solo piccolo (pictured above), will be performed by Signal Ensemble on Saturday, June 9 at 7:30pm in Slee Hall. Ensemble Mise-En features Siphonophorae for mixed chamber ensemble on their concert, on Friday, June 8 at 7:30pm in Slee Hall. In this work, according to the composer, “I allowed myself to go through a process of discovery, which led me to find contrasting shapes and ideas, but always following a thread that unites them.”