Film segment:
- The Garden of Earthly Delights, and Frontierlandia by Rubén Ortiz-Torres
Gabriela Ortiz,
Composer
Click here to read the article:
"Holy Power Tools,
Batman!"
Art Issues, no 57, March/April, Los Angeles, 1999, pp. 30-31
Click here to read another essay about Rubén Ortiz-Torres' work:
"Customized Hybrids - The Art of Rubén Ortiz Torres and Lowriding in
Southern California". C. Ondine Chavoya. The New Centennial Review 4.2 (2004), 141-184
Click here to read about the movie and see an excerpt of The Garden of Earthly Delights.
Rubén Ortiz-Torres was born in Mexico City in 1964. Educated within the utopian models of republican Spanish anarchism soon confronted the tragedies and cultural clashes of post colonial third world. Being the son of a couple of Latin American folklore musicians he soon identified more with the noises of urban punk music. After giving up the dream of playing baseball in the major leagues and some architecture training (Harvard Graduate School of Design) he decided to study art. He went first to the oldest and one of the most academic art schools of the Americas (the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City) and later to one of the newest and more experimental (Calarts in Valencia CA). After enduring Mexico City's earthquake and pollution he moved to Los Angeles with a Fullbright grant to survive riots, fires, floods, more earthquakes, pollution and proposition 187. He still hangs around school but now as a Faculty member of the University of California in San Diego. During all this he has been able to produce artwork in the form of paintings, photographs, objects, installations, videos, and films. He has participated in several international exhibitions and film festivals. His work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museums of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and San Diego, the California Museum of Photography in Riverside CA, the Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid Spain among others.
After showing his work around the world and be living abroad, he now realizes that his dad's music was in fact better than most rock’n roll.
Gabriela Ortiz Torres is widely recognized as one of the most important Mexican composers of the younger generation. Her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk music and jazz in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways. Her compositions are credited for being both entertaining and immediate as well as profound and sophisticated; she achieves a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity.
Her music has been commissioned and played by prestigious ensembles, soloists and orchestras such as Los Angeles Philharmonic and Esa Pekka Salonen, Kroumata percussion ensemble, Amadinda percussion ensemble, Kronos quartet, Dawn Upshaw, Sarah Leonard, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Pierre Amoyal, Luis Julio Toro, Tambuco percussion quartet, The Mexican University Philharmonic Orchestra, La Camerata Chamber Players, Mexico City's Philharmonic Orchestra,Simon Bolivar Orchestra in Venezuela, BBC Scottish Symphony, among others.
Recent premieres include Altar de Piedra for three percussion players, timpani and orchestra premiered in Europe by Amadinda percussion Quartet and The Hungarian Philharmonic Orchestra under Zoltan Kocsis; and the American premiere of the same work by the commissioning ensemble, Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra with Esa- Pekka Salonen and Kroumata percussion ensemble. The Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble will perform the avant-premiere of her new opera Unicamente la Verdad in August 2008, under Carmen Helena Téllez; and Kroumata is prepring a Swedish premiere of Altar de Piedra with the Mälmo Symphony
Ortiz has been honored with the Civitella Ranieri Artistic Residency; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship; the Fulbright Fellowship; the Distinción Universidad Nacional; the First prize of the Silvestre Revueltas National Chamber Music Competition with her piece Altar de muertos (a work commissioned by the Kronos Quartet); the First Prize at the Alicia Urreta Composition Competition; the Composers Award and the National Artists System Fellowship from the Mexican Council for the Arts and Culture; Banff Center for the Arts Residency; the Inroads Commission, a program of Arts International with funds from the Ford Foundation; the Rockefeller Foundation; the Mozart Medal Award for Mexican Theatre and Music as the best composer of1997; and The Fundación Cultural Bancomer Award.
In 1994 she wrote the music for the choreographic work Errant Manoeuvres performed by the Emma Diamond Dance Company at the Merce Cunnigham Studio in New York and in 1995 she completed the music score for the award winning film Frontierland produced and directed by Rubén Ortiz and Jessie Lerner.
In 2000 she returned to film music with the music score for the Mexican film Por la Libre produced by Alta Vista films and directed by Juan Carlos de Llaca.
Gabriela Ortiz Torres studied composition with Mario Lavista at the National Conservatory of Music, and Federico Ibarra at the National University of Mexico. In 1990 she was awarded the British Council Fellowship to study in London with Robert Saxton at The Guildhall School of Music and Drama. In 1992 she received the University of Mexico Scholarship to complete Ph.D. studies in electroacoustic music composition with Simon Emmerson at The City University in London. She currently teaches composition at the Mexican University of Mexico City.
Her music is currently published by Universal Edition. Boosey and Hawkes, Arla Music and Ediciones Mexicanas de Música.
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