Jimmy López

Born: October 21, 1978 in Lima, Peru

An “undeniably exciting composer” (Opera News), Jimmy López  displays “a brilliant command of orchestral timbres and textures” (Dallas Morning News) and “a virtuoso mastery of the modern orchestra” (The New Yorker). His works have been performed around the world by leading orchestras such as the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra and Orchestre symphonique de Montréal.

In the 2024–25 season, López is a Mead Composer-Curator with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, for which he curates an evening of chamber music for the orchestra’s MusicNOW series. His Symphony No. 5, Fantastica, written for and dedicated to conductor Christian Reif, will be premiered by its commissioners, the Cincinnati, Detroit and Gävle symphony orchestras. Elsewhere, his works will be performed by orchestras including the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, Naples Philharmonic, Tampere Philharmonic Orchestra, Oregon Symphony and Sarasota Orchestra.

During the 2023–24 season, the Houston Symphony and Andrés Orozco-Estrada gave the world premiere of the first part of López’s Symphony No.4: Eclipse; the tenor Michael Fabiano premiered a new song cycle titled Quiet Poems at Arizona’s Tucson Desert Song Festival; and soloist Jörgen van Rijen, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra and Tarmo Peltokoski premiered López’s new Trombone Concerto Shift. Further performances will take place during the 2025–26 seasons with co-commissioners San Francisco Symphony and San Diego Symphony.

Further highlights include the orchestral work Loud (2023), which received its world premiere in San Francisco by the International Pride Orchestra conducted by Christine Brandes. Loud was co-commissioned by the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestra. López’s critically acclaimed orchestral tone poem Aino (2022) was commissioned and premiered by Orchestre de Paris, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra and Chicago Symphony Orchestra conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, and has since been performed in the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, the Czech Republic and the U.S. In December 2022, mezzo-soprano J’Nai Bridges and Catalyst Quartet gave the world premiere of López’s song cycle Airs for Mother at 92NY Center for Culture & Arts in New York. López’s piano concerto Ephemerae (2021), commissioned by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Oslo Philharmonic Orchestra, Orquestra Sinfônica do Estado and Philadelphia Orchestra, continues to receive performances by its dedicatee Javier Perianes. López’s Symphony No. 3, Altered Landscape (2020), a project in collaboration with the Nevada Museum of Art, was premiered in May 2022 by the Reno Philharmonic conducted by Laura Jackson; the work received its UK premiere in 2023 by the BBC Concert Orchestra and Anna-Maria Helsing.

Among López’s earlier orchestral output is Perú Negro (2012), which received its BBC Proms debut in 2023 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Klaus Mäkelä. The much-loved Fiesta! (2007) has received more than 130 performances worldwide, making it one of the most-performed contemporary works in the orchestral repertoire.

López has also written works for the stage, with the oratorio Dreamers receiving its world premiere in California in 2019 with Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia Orchestra. In 2015, Lyric Opera of Chicago commissioned López’s debut opera Bel Canto, based on Ann Patchett’s novel of the same name. It became the best-selling opera of the company’s 2015–16 season, was broadcast by PBS and was nominated at the 2016 International Opera Awards.

López’s discography includes four portrait albums dedicated to his works, notably 2022’s Aurora & Ad Astra, released by Pentatone and featuring Andrés Orozco-Estrada, violinist Leticia Moreno and the Houston Symphony. Aurora was nominated for a 2022 Latin Grammy award in the category of Best Classical Contemporary Composition. The same year, his song “Where Once We Sang” with lyrics by Mark Campbell was also recorded on Pentatone by mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke and pianist Kirill Kuzmin.

A native of Lima, Jimmy López studied at the city’s National Conservatory of Music before graduating with a Master of Music degree from the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki and with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. López currently lives in California.

Symphony No. 5, Fantastica

• Composed: 2024, co-commissioned by the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony, Gävle Symphony and Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz. It is dedicated to Christian Reif and to his son, John Lukas.
  
• Premiere: These CSO performances are the work’s world premiere.
• Instrumentation: 2 flutes (incl. piccolo), 2 oboes (incl. English horn), 2 clarinets (incl. E-flat clarinet), 2 bassoons (incl. contrabassoon), 4 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, whip, vibraslap, mark tree, glockenspiel, tom-toms, suspended cymbals, tam-tam, crash cymbals, tambourine, paper bag, snare drum, vibraphone, tubular bells, ratchet, harp, strings
  
• Duration: approx. 25 minutes

There is something truly special about Michael Ende’s 1979 novel The Neverending Story, something that I can’t quite pinpoint, even after having written a whole symphony inspired by it. Perhaps, like all great masterworks, it refuses to give away all its mysteries at once, therefore begging for repeated readings—just like the great masterpieces of music require repeated listening, over decades and centuries, to be fully understood.

Across its many chapters one is met with oracles, centaurs, flying dragons and a host of fantastical creatures that seem to pour incessantly from an endless fountain of creativity. Much is demanded from the reader, for one cannot sit on the sidelines while our main protagonist, Bastian, is inevitably drawn to this magical world not by his own will, but by the irresistible and magnetic power of Fantastica, a realm where everything that the mind can conjure up seems possible. By the time I had reached the middle of the book, I felt as if the walls between reality and fiction had been completely obliterated, and I found myself questioning whether I was also a part of this story, and whether Ende had found a way for our minds to move across dimensions in ways that our bodies are not yet capable of.

The music flowed. It flowed from within me and beyond me. There were times it felt as if I was taking dictation rather than composing, where I felt like a mere scribe rather than the author of the music. The characters lived and thrived within me and each one of them seemed to claim their own musical realm. I opted to remain still and listen to them. This is how the music was born, or at least this is how writing this symphony felt from the very first bar.

Divided into five movements, this symphony is an adventure on its own. Rather than narrating the events in detail, I have chosen to follow the grand arch of the novel and focus on its main protagonists. The Book of Books presents us with a disheveled Bastian, rushing into Mr. Coreander’s bookshop and discovering The Neverending Story, its cover adorned with an intriguing seal named AURYN. The score is peppered with lightning-quick scales on woodwinds and harp, piercing pizzicati on strings, and percussion effects that include the use of paper, but this movement also contains thematic clues to all the other movements; something that can only be caught after repeated listening.

At the beginning of the book we are met with a mysterious force called The Nothing, which is slowly consuming Fantastica, and a terribly ill Childlike Empress whose destiny is so intertwined with that of her subjects that her death would mean the end of Fantastica as well. Atreyu’s Great Quest, takes us on Atreyu’s impossible task of finding a cure for the Childlike Empress. For his protection, the Empress bestows Atreyu, a boy warrior, with AURYN, a most powerful amulet that is capable of protecting from any and all harm. Atreyu valiantly takes on this task, first with his beloved horse Artax, and later with Falkor, a flying luckdragon. The movement opens with a hunting call by the horns, which later join a galloping string section. The brass lead the way throughout this movement, symbolizing grit and relentless power.

In Moon Child, we enter the ethereal world of the Childlike Empress and her magnificent Ivory Tower. A trio of vibraphone, harp and glockenspiel create a fragile atmosphere that transports us to her enigmatic world. It is at this point that the Childlike Empress tears down the walls between dimensions and asks Bastian—who all this time has been reading the book at his school’s attic—to give her a new name, for that is the only way in which Fantastica can be saved. Unlike Atreyu, Bastian is not known for his boldness nor bravery, and only at the very last minute does he finally manage to gather the courage to give the Empress a new name: Moon Child. By then, however, Fantastica has been almost completely consumed by The Nothing and reduced to a single grain of sand. Not all is lost though, because, as the Moon Child tells Bastian, Fantastica can rise again through him and his imagination. The rebirth of Fantastica is portrayed in this movement through a grand orchestral tutti that grows all the way from a simple melody on solo cello and bassoon.  

Bastian the Savior is the most substantial movement of the symphony, and it tells of Bastian’s adventures within Fantastica, after he decides to leave the real world and enter the book for good. In Fantastica he is regarded as a great savior, but over time he begins to lose his memories and forget that he was once human. Bastian becomes corrupt and arrogant, making inappropriate use of AURYN (which is now in his hands) to create dangers and creatures for him to vanquish and therefore boast of his conquests. This brings great imbalance to Fantastica, but through Atreyu’s insistence, Bastian is persuaded to repent by understanding the true power of love. Gritty, insidious, and at times ferocious, the music in this movement takes us through all the different stages of Bastian’s decadence and ultimate redemption.

The last movement takes us to the most beautiful and powerful moment of this story. In it, I quote all the previous themes, creating a cumulative effect that brings both: thematic cohesiveness and emotional catharsis. Replete with symbolism, Ende has his characters enter the AURYN. Bastian, Atreyu and Falkor, all step in it and find the Water of Life, from which Bastian drinks. Bastian regains his memories, returns to the world of humans, and reconciles with his father, who until then had been neglecting him after losing his wife. Bastian then discovers that he has brought the Water of Life with him from Fantastica, manifested in his father’s tears of love and joy.

I am incredibly grateful to my dear friend, Christian Reif for asking me to write this piece, and for introducing me to this unique novel. Like many, I had only known The Neverending Story through the 1984 motion picture, but reading the book was a completely different, almost mystical experience. Known mostly as a novel for children of all ages, I am convinced that any adult will find this book deeply satisfying, as it has layer upon layer of metaphor and symbolism that could have only been conceived by an illuminated mind. With this knowledge, I also tasked myself with creating a work that could appeal to all audiences, but which could be especially enticing to children, teenagers, and young adults. This is why I don’t shy away from using an arsenal of stylistic tools that feed off musical worlds as contrasting as contemporary, post romantic, film, and video game.

Symphony No. 5: Fantastica was co-commissioned by Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Gävle Symphony Orchestra and Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz. It is dedicated to Christian Reif and to his son, John Lukas. Christian’s devotion and love for John Lukas have been a guiding light while writing this work.

—Jimmy López