Artist Statement

This is a concert focusing on recovering and make known part of the history of electroacoustic music from Latin American.

The political and economic instability in many Latin American countries have been deeply affecting the life of its inhabitants for decades. Support for artistic activities has usually been postponed to solve urgent social problems. In spite of that, the development in the region of the electronic arts in general and the electroacoustic music in particular, is really astounding. To name but a few examples: Mauricio Kagel composed eight electroacoustic studies in Argentina between 1950 and 1953, according to Hugh Davies’ International Electronic Music Catalog. José Vicente Asuar in Chile, Joaquín Orellana in Guatemala, Reginaldo Carvalho in Brazil, Horacio Vaggione in Argentina, Héctor Quintanar in Mexico and Juan Blanco in Cuba are only some of the many names in the ocean of electroacoustic music creativity that has always been Latin America.

The compositions on this program presents a significant sampling of music created between the 50s and 80s by artists from various Latin American countries. The program includes: “Valsa Sideral” (1962) by Jorge Antunes from Brazil and “Bolivianos…!” (1973) by Alberto Villalpando from Bolivia, among several other works.

• Dr. Ricardo Dal Farra, is professor of electroacoustic music and media arts at Concordia University, Canada and director of the Electronic Arts Research Centre (CEIArtE) at the National University of Tres de Febrero, Argentina. He has been director of Hexagram, the Centre for Research-Creation in Media Arts and Technologies, Canada; researcher on electroacoustic music and media arts history for UNESCO, France; director of the Multimedia Communication national program at the Federal Ministry of Education, Argentina; coordinator of the Documentation and Conservation of the Media Arts Heritage – DOCAM international research alliance, Canada; and senior consultant of Amauta – Andean Media Arts Centre in Cusco, Peru. As an electroacoustic music composer and new media artist his work has been presented in more than 40 countries and recordings of his pieces are published in +20 international editions (including Computer Music Journal and Leonardo Music Journal by MIT Press). Dr. Dal Farra has received prizes and commissions from the International Computer Music Association and the Sao Paulo International Arts Biennial of Brazil, among others.  Funded by The Daniel Langlois Foundation he created the largest collection publicly available of Latin American Electroacoustic Music.  Dal Farra started the Balance-Unbalance conference series focusing on how the [media] arts could play an active role in helping to solve our environmental crisis. Jointly with the humanitarian organization Red Cross Climate Centre he developed the “art! ⋈ climate” worldwide project. He is an active member of several editorial boards: Organised Sound (Cambridge Press), Leonardo/ISAST (MIT Press), Media-N and professional organizations: Electroacoustic Music Studies Network, Earth-to-the-Earth. He is also a member of the International Advisory Committee of ISEA International.                                                                    concordia.ca/faculty/ricardo-dal-farra.html