June in Buffalo 2020 Senior Composer Hilda Paredes

Hilda Paredes will be working with students at this year’s June in Buffalo Festival as one of three senior composers and guest lecturers. Hilda has been firmly established as one of the leading Mexican composers of her generation, she has made her home in London since 1979 and 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, Harrison Birtwistle 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 ArtsCouncil 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 continues to be involved in the musical life of her native country, having taught at the University in Mexico City and several other music institutions and was also a radio producer of new music.

She has been recipient of important awards, such as the Arts Council of Great Britain fellowship for composers; the Rockefeller, Fund for Culture Mexico/USA and the J.S. GuggenheimFellowship in the USA and is currently beneficiary of the Sistema Nacional deCreadores, (FONCA) in Mexico.

As a freelance lecturer, Hilda has taught composition and lectured at Manchester University, the University of San Diego California, University of Buffalo and other prestigious Universities in the US, at Centre Acanthes in France and in 2007 was appointed the Darius Milhuad Visiting Professor at Mills College in the US. In 2011, she has been visiting professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya en Barcelona.

Her second chamber opera El Palacio Imaginado, commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte, EnglishNational Opera and the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, was premiered with much acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic.

Recently completed works include La tierra de la miel, a collaborative opera project commissioned by Susan Narucki and premiered in 2013 at UCSD. More recently she completed her third string quartet Bitácora capilar premiered at Milton Court Theatre in London and a shorter version of this work Hacia una bitácora capilar which was premiered in May at the Festival Tage fur Neue Musik in Witten , both written and premiered at the celebrations for the Arditti String Quartet fortieth anniversary.