Composed 1997/2021; 9 minutes
“When something sparks my interest, I take it, I absorb it, and I transform it into something very personal,” says Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. Trained in Mexico and later in Europe, where she spent five years, Ortiz believes that an intense engagement with the world around her nourishes her creative work. “Living life, discipline, and an absolute love for music are essential,” she adds.
Ortiz’s musical roots run deep. Her parents founded Los Folkloristas, a group dedicated to preserving and recording the traditional music of Mexico and Latin America. Touring with them, Ortiz absorbed the indigenous, European, and African elements that define the folk traditions of her country and its neighbors. Simultaneously, the music of Bartók provided a gateway to integrating folk music into classical forms. All these influences are evident in works such as Yanga, one of what she calls “two operas in the oven.” The opera tells the story of an enslaved prince from Gabon who escaped captivity, established several palenques (villages founded by escaped slaves), and negotiated with the Spanish crown to found the first free town in the Americas.
The multi-genre video-opera ¡Únicamente la verdad! (Only the Truth) is set against a background of drug trafficking in northern Mexico. In other works, environmental concerns take center stage: Arrecife (Reef), for string orchestra, draws inspiration from the effects of climate change, while Fractalis (2020), a piano concerto (and a related film documentary), meditates on humanity’s relationship with nature, imagining how nature can be healed. As a protest against disappearing ecosystems in the Yucatán Peninsula, Ortiz wrote a cello concerto Dzonot (Abyss, 2024), premièred earlier this season in Los Angeles.
La Calaca (The Skull) is the final movement of Ortiz’s four-movement string quartet Altar de Muertos (Altar of the Dead), commissioned by the Kronos Quartet in 1997. Each movement, Ortiz explains, “describes diverse moods, traditions, and the spiritual worlds that shape the global concept of death in Mexico, as well as my own personal concept of death.” The term calaca, colloquial in Mexican culture, traces back to Maya times. It refers to skull or skeleton figures commonly featured in Day of the Dead festivities, often portrayed dancing and playing musical instruments to celebrate the joy of the afterlife. “This movement reflects a musical world full of joy, vitality and a great expressive force,” Ortiz says.
At the conclusion of La Calaca, Ortiz quotes a melody of Huichol origin that captivated her upon first hearing it. This melody was sung by Familia de la Cruz, a family of Huichol musicians from the state of Nayarit, Mexico. “Their musical art is always found in ceremonial and ritual life,” Ortiz notes, highlighting the profound connection between tradition and personal expression in her work.