Gabriela Ortiz, one of Mexico’s most celebrated contemporary composers, draws deeply from her country’s rich folk traditions and her own family’s musical heritage. In Kauyumari, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and premiered in 2021, Ortiz explores the spiritual and mythic world of the Huichol people, an Indigenous group from western Mexico.  The title Kauyumari means “blue deer” in the Huichol language. For the Huichol, the blue deer is far more than an animal; it is a revered spiritual guide encountered through a sacred pilgrimage involving the peyote cactus. This journey is both literal and symbolic, granting access to the invisible world, facilitating communication with ancestors, and offering healing for the soul. Each year, the Huichol “hunt” the blue deer, making offerings in gratitude for the wisdom and connection bestowed upon them.

Ortiz conceived Kauyumari as a reflection on returning to live music after the global rupture of the COVID-19 pandemic. She saw a parallel between the blue deer’s ability to traverse the tangible and intangible worlds, and the power of music to reconnect us with the unseen and the ineffable. The piece incorporates a Huichol melody, originally sung by the De La Cruz family and previously used in Ortiz’s 1997 quartet Altar de Muertos (Altar of the Dead). Here, the melody is gradually transformed-first recognizable, then dissolving into a complex orchestral texture. This musical metamorphosis evokes the hallucinogenic effects of peyote, as well as the shifting boundaries between the visible and invisible realms.

Scored for a large orchestra, Kauyumari unfolds in a single, seven-minute movement. Ortiz’s orchestration is vivid and inventive, employing a wide array of percussion instruments (including seed pod rattle, jawbone, log drum, and more) alongside traditional winds, brass, harp, and strings. The piece’s rhythmic drive and evolving textures conjure the blue deer’s journey, while a choral wind section and persistent rhythmic motifs offer reassurance-a sense that, even after disruption, the world finds its course anew.

Ortiz writes, “While composing this piece, I noted once again how music has the power to grant us access to the intangible; healing our wounds and binding us to what can only be expressed through sound. Although life is filled with interruptions, Kauyumari is a comprehension and celebration of the fact that each of these rifts is also a new beginning.”