Americas Society Exhibits Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music
Americas Society Exhibits Joaquín Orellana: The Spine of Music
"Orellana’s radical practice combines innovation with a powerful social conscience, and ancestral techniques with avant-garde sensibility," writes Arte Al Día.
The first exhibition of the Guatemalan composer’s útiles sonoros (sound tools) in the United States. The exhibition, a collaboration between Visual Arts at Americas Society and Music of the Americas, presents these innovative instruments alongside the work of contemporary artists. On view through March 5, the exhibition is curated by Diana Flatto and Sebastián Zubieta…
Joaquín Orellana is among the most influential living members of Latin America’s musical avant-garde. Born in Guatemala City in 1930, Orellana studied violin and composition at the National Conservatory of Music in Guatemala and was a fellow at the preeminent Centro Latinoamericano de Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) at the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella in Buenos Aires.
There, he became particularly interested in electronic music, and after returning to Guatemala in 1968 he decided to invent alternatives in order to recreate the sound-world he imagined after his experiences in Argentina…
Orellana’s compositions are deeply connected to the difficult history of Guatemala, providing a soundscape attuned to the oppression of indigenous people and the pains of a decades-long civil war. Influenced by Orellana, the dark social and political environment became a guiding principle for a younger generation of Latin American composers. A new genre of "social-sound" emerged, where composers looked to society and a people’s history for musical inspiration. Orellana’s radical practice combines innovation with a powerful social conscience, and ancestral techniques with avant-garde sensibility…
