Paolo Griffin is a Peruvian-Canadian composer based in Tkarón:to/Toronto whose music explores notions of focused/unfocussed listening, repetition, and formal structures while maintaining a focus on close collaboration and creative spontaneity with the performers he works with. Paolo’s music has been featured in concerts and on the radio by the Resident Orkest (NL), The New European Ensemble (NL), Avanti! Chamber Music (FI), Duo Holz (CA), Freesound (CA), and more. Paolo is also the Artistic and Executive Director of Freesound, a Toronto-based performer’s collective that consists of a core group of the city’s most adventurous young musicians and interpreters of contemporary music.

NOTE: “I was on a walk by myself in the afternoon of February 1st. My neighbourhood in the West end of Toronto has a good amount of graffiti and public art, most of it very beautiful. On the side of a building I walked by, just off of Dundas St. West, someone had scrawled the words, I am I, in black paint on a white brick wall. Our Winters in Canada can be quite bright, since the cold gives away to near constant sun during the day. I thought the contrast of white and black in the glaring sunlight was very striking. After I began writing this short piece, I remembered the words I had seen written on that building (by the time I started working on this piece, a week later, the words had been removed). Those words became the text for this piece.”

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.

Born in 1979, Álvaro Gallegos is a Chilean music journalist, lecturer, scholar and composer based in Santiago, Chile. He has written for newspapers, magazines, and websites, and has produced CDs, including two albums for Naxos Records. He has composed some twenty pieces, including for solo instruments and orchestral works. In 2017 he won the “President of the Republic” Music Award, and in 2019 the “Domingo Santa Cruz” Award from the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts.

TEXT/LETRAS:

¡Ah! Es la brizna del tiempo último. ¡Sí!

Vámonos a Guyana, el pasto es más verde allí.

Written for Bahué's Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA and HC Media in Haverhill, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.

Joshua Marquez is a Philly-based Filipinx-American composer, guitarist, and sound artist whose music explores the liminal space between tone/noise. Searing a sonic imprint of cultural identity, his explorations of the noise spectrum represent alienation and assimilation through the fusion and fission of disparate timbres. Joshua’s music is described as “upsetting and calming in equal measure” with atmospheres that “sink into your skin” (Prism Reviews). Hailed as "cutting-edge" (The Gazette), “expertly crafted” (We Write About Music), "haunting" (The Daily Iowan), and "creepy" (Fanfare Magazine), Marquez's polemic deconstruction and disintegration of sound aims to present music through a decolonized lens. (joshuamarquez.com)

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA and HC Media in Haverhill, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio. Visit https://www.bahueduo.com/lcmc for more information.

IDA SÁNCHEZ TELLO studied voice at the National Conservatory of Music and later transferred to Mannes where she majored in Choral Conducting under the tutelage of Mark Shapiro. She studied harmony and counterpoint with Robert Cuckson, Chris Park, and José Suárez. Her first published works were premiered in 2018 in Mexico City as part of the cycle of songs "Testimonios de la Tierra". Aside from music, she also studied Biomedical Engineering. She's currently working as a freelance organist and choral conductor while working on a Spanish mass and an opera based on her hometown's legends.

NOTE: "I wrote this poem as a hopelessly romantic 15-year-old, never imagining that it would be turned into a song almost 30 years later. While adding notes, rather than doing it in the here and now, I tried to place myself back in León during the spring full of Jacarandas wearing a middle school uniform and tried to impress that simple, yet awakening self into it. Thanks, Ali and Ariel for this great opportunity. It is an honor to have this song performed along with fantastic performers."

TEXT/LETRAS

Mirando hacia el firmamento

contigo, amor

me doy cuenta de que todo

lo tengo yo.

Mirando hacia las estrellas

sé que las ves,

podrías decir que son bellas

más de una vez

Mirando hacia el infinito

me encontraré

y si tú no estás conmigo

me moriré

Mirando hacia el universo

eres mi amor.

Mirando hacia el firmamento

juntos, tú y yo

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA, and the Community Music School of Springfield in Springfield, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.

JAIME DÍAZ is a queer, Mexican sound maker based in Glasgow, UK. They are a PhD student at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland working on how notation strips away marginalized identities.

TEXT/LETRAS

como una flor sola

me estimo a mi mismo en la tierra

solo soy un cantor

me pongo triste

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA, and the Community Music School of Springfield in Springfield, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.

J. Andrés Ballesteros is a composer, educator, and speaker based in Cambridge, MA. His works are centered in classical music but include a variety of musical styles, from Latin music to electronics and theater. Andrés regularly works on collaborative projects that engage with youth and community organizations in creating original works around issues they face. He has been recognized for his leadership in working to expand the representation and performance of works by historically underrepresented composers. His work was recently recognized in Ana Francisca Vega’s book Corazón de Mexicanos Como Yo, highlighting 50 Mexican-Americans who broke boundaries.

TEXT/LETRAS

Poco a poco me derrito,

La vela de tus sueños;

Poco a poco me desvanezco,

La llama de tus esperanzas,

Tus esperanzas.

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA, and the Community Music School of Springfield in Springfield, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.

Alex Guerrero’s background as a singer greatly informs his compositions: as an operatic lyric tenor who performs with The Metropolitan Opera and Lyric Opera of Chicago Choruses; as a concert soloist; and as a chamber, concert, and liturgical choral artist who’s performed with the Grammy Award-winning True Concord, the Sephardi Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue (the oldest North American Jewish congregation) and the Choir at St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue (both in New York City), and the symphonic choruses alongside the world-renown Philadelphia Orchestra and The New York Philharmonic. His setting of “Tenebrae factae sunt” was a prize winner in The New York Virtuoso Singers’ composition competition.

TEXT/LETRAS

Seleccionada del poema de Delmira Agustini (1886-1914)

iSi la vida es amor,

iQuiero mas vida para amar,

iMi vida toda canta, besa, riel

iMi vida toda es una boca en flor!

Written for the Bahué Latinx Composer Miniature Challenge. Performed and recorded by Ariel Campos and Aliana de la Guardia at Mt San Antonio College in Walnut, CA, and the Community Music School of Springfield in Springfield, MA. Audio and video editing by Jeffrey Means, Suonovivo Audio.