Jorge Variego was born in Rosario, Argentina, in 1975. The first performance of BLINK took place in Knoxville, Tennessee, on March 29, 2021, with Aram Demirjian conducting the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Approximate performance time is five minutes.
A native of Argentina, composer Jorge Variego is a member of the Music Theory/Composition faculty at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. He is also a faculty member of the Sewanee Summer Music Festival. In 2017, Variego was named the College of Fine Arts and Sciences, Performing Arts division at the University of Tennessee’s Mentor of the Year. Variego is the founder and director of the Domino Ensemble, devoted to advocating new music that features improvisation. Recent compositions by Variego include works for the Indiana University Guitar Ensemble, the Orchester Liestal, the Cumberland Orchestra, the Knoxville Symphony, the Oak Ridge Symphony, and the Roane Choir Society. The music of Jorge Variego may be heard on the Albany, Centaur, CMMAS, Naxos, and Parma labels. Variego’s book, Composing with Constraints, was published in 2021 by Oxford University Press.
Jorge Variego’s BLINK was commissioned and premiered by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra. Music Director Aram Demirjian led the performance. The composer provides the following program notes:
BLINK celebrates the uniqueness of the synchronous fireflies, a singular species of fireflies that lives in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park whose individuals synchronize their flashing patterns.
In the piece, the magic of the event is captured in the form of a journey that starts and ends in the National Park, going through imaginary worlds that exist inside of the Smokies. The glide through surreal underwater worlds, giant caves, and Daliesque cities ends where it started, in the park, with the synchronous fireflies in full splendor.
BLINK was commissioned by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra for the 2021 Young People’s Concert: “Nature at Night: A Smokies Symphony.”