Edge of the Center

Feb. 22: Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez (Professor of Composition, Eastman School of Music)

Masterclass and composer presentation

The Center for 21st Century Music was delighted to have a visit by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez to the University at Buffalo on the 22nd of February.

(Source: https://www.carlossg.com/gallery)

Some background on him from his website:

Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez was born in Mexico City in 1964 and now lives in the New York tundra, where he is a Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music. He studied with Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Steven Mackey and Henri Dutilleux at Yale, Princeton and Tanglewood, respectively. He has received many of the standard awards in the field (e.g. Barlow Prize, Guggenheim, Fulbright, Koussevitzky, Fromm, American Academy of Arts and Letters.) He likes machines with hiccups and spiders with missing legs, looks at Paul Klee's Notebooks every day, and tries to use the same set of ears to listen to Bach, Radiohead, or Ligeti.
(Source: https://www.carlossg.com/)

One participant reported on the visit as follows: “Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Professor of Composition at the Eastman School, is an artist unafraid either to discuss big ideas or to express grand poetic vision. His musical vocabulary is fully equipped to rise to the occasion. Alluding to Italo Calvino, he invokes the “sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness…” Intimations of the connection to Donatoni’s notion of panel form in Sanchez-Guttierrez’s work invites a mode of analysis that will surely be met with reward.”

James Falzone, UB doctoral candidate in Composition

Luciérnagas (1999), for clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and violoncello by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez

Written for Eighth Blackbird, and commissioned by the Carnegie Hall Co.

Performed by the Eastman BroadBand Ensemble: Sammy Lesnick, cl; Daniel Pesca, pf; Connor Stevens and Brant Blackard, perc; Hanna Hurwitz, vln, and Mariel Roberts, vc. Tim Weiss, conductor.

SoundSCAPE Festival, Maccagno, Italy, July 2013

New Short Stories, for piano and ensemble

Grossman Ensemble

Daniel Pesca, piano

James Baker, conductor

Premiered on March 15, 2019, at the Logan Center for the Arts.