“I will also add that I was not initially receptive to what I heard. However, at a certain point I fell under the spell of this music and came to the conclusion that I was in the presence of a composer who is an extraordinarily deep thinker, someone able to take a listener into mysterious by-ways using very slender means.”

— Stephen Mould

Award-winning Colombian composer Julián De La Chica, is a multidisciplinary artist based in Brooklyn, NY, whose influences range from minimalism & post-minimalism to the alternative electronic scene. His work is often inspired by everyday images, the search of personal spiritual reflection, and inner darkness. It mixes piano, strings, and classical singers, with electronic keyboards and controllers, crossing over from classical to ambient, post-minimal and electronic music. His discography includes more than 6 solo albums and more than 14 collaborative projects.

De La Chica began his musical career in the classical tradition, studying piano at the age of five in his hometown, Manizales. During his early years, he immersed himself in the world of “classical music”,  developing a keen affinity with Baroque composers and symphonic sound. After high school he moved to Europe. Interested in spirituality and philosophy, he began studies of humanities in Salamanca (Spain), and also briefly studied philosophy and metaphysics in Madrid. He undertook self-guided studies, in Bad Münstereifel (Germany) reading classical literature, composition, and the study of dead languages. It was during this period that he composed pieces and essays about music, philosophy and spirituality, inspired by his readings of Garrigou-Langrange and Teresa de Avila. Finding himself dissatisfied with the conservative musical minds of the music schools, he decided against continuing his education formally in a conservatory.

As a visual artist & film composer, De La Chica has worked with various independent producers and directors. In 2017, he won the Best Original Score award at the London Independent Film Awards for the short film Margaret and in 2018, the film Honor Up, directed by Damon Dash and produced by Kanye West, included seven works composed by De La Chica.

In 2020, De La Chica debuted as a film director with Agatha, an experimental—Arthouse film, based on his short story: Voyeuristic Images and part of his piano cycle Op. 10. The exploration of the psyche of loneliness and its unapologetic narrative simplicity, made the film officially selected by more than 30 international film festivals and winner of 18 awards, including Best Picture, Best LGBTQ Film, Best Cinematography, Best Soundtrack and Best Actor. The press praised: “De La Chica exhibits directorial competency…”; “An elegant, original, poetic film that touches us with delicacy”; “Julián De La Chica is an author to follow.”Agatha was premiered during the 37th edition of the prestigious Bogota Film Festival, where it also won the Special Mention: Best International. By the end of 2021, and continuing with the same narrative and experimentation, De La Chica released his second film, Dora, a story of a young, aspiring hairdresser from Colombia living in Queens that is suddenly faced with the grim uncertainties of the pandemic’s epicenter. Brilliantly incorporating selections from his recent album, Silencios Fatuos Op. 16, De La Chica lets the deeply nuanced music speak for itself and the role that isolation plays in this 30-minute snapshot of love and sexuality, loss and despair.

For the spring 2022, De La Chica will release his first book, El Castigo de Dios (God’s punishment). This is De La Chica’s first published literary work, based on the small Colombian town, Agua de Dios, and its extensive history in the 19th and 20th centuries as an isolated community created by the Colombian government to contain people with leprosy. In tandem with the forthcoming book, an opera of the same title, composed by De La Chica, is in its final creative stages.

As a performer, De La Chica debuted in the United States in October of 2003, when he was invited by the former President de Colombia and Secretary of the Organization of American States, Cesar Gaviria Trujillo to opening the “Hispanic Week Celebration”, offering a concert at the Headquarters of the OAS in Washington D.C, for the diplomatic corps and the American government. He performs his music in different settings, ranging from electronic music bars to conventional classical stages. Since 2009, he has been a Baldwin Piano Company artist and plays the custom-designed Baldwin: Heavy Metal piano. He is a founding member of the independent record label Irreverence Group Music (IGM) and lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Music

Following his debut album Irreverence (2012), where he explores genres such as hip hop, ambient, and electronic, De La Chica released his first solo piano album Nocturnal and Circular Images Op. 5 (2015). The album was inspired by daily life imagery in New York City and some of the Images were premiered by the Cuban concert pianist Leonardo Gell on his tour of Cuba (2014), and as a part of Gell's project "Minimal piano: De Bach a De la Chica”. In 2018, De La Chica returns to the electronic world with Psychosis, an album that experiments with ambient, post-minimal, acid, industrial, and minimal electronic influences, and which concept explores contamination and sickness within the virtual world today. The album was inspired by De La Chica's 2018 summer trip to Berlin, Krakow, and Warsaw and it was released during a live show at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn, NY. In July of 2020, during the pandemic times, De La Chica released his first Symphony, an exploration of the composer's isolation in his studio in Brooklyn, NY. This work, for an orchestra of synthesizers, rethinks European canonical definitions of genres in a new form of creation during social distancing.

Collaborations

Among his collaborations with other artists are: Minimal Aggression (2015) — a mutual interrogation of minimalism, its possibilities, and its trajectory in the 21st century with musicologist and composer Susan Campos-Fonseca. Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op. 6 (2009) — a cycle that narrates four real situations happening in a bar, written by De La Chica while he was sitting at the Standard Hotel's terrace in the Meat Packing district in New York. The work was premiered during De La Chica's debut at Carnegie Hall in 2016 by American Scorchio quartet and Dominican Tenor José Heredia. Experimentelle und unbestimmte Lieder Op. 9 (2017) — a cycle of German songs for soprano, piano and synthesizer recorded by American soprano Rachel Hippert and based on the spiritual progression through the five pillars of internal transit that De la Chica suggests are the fundamental basis of meditation. Preludes Op. 8 (2018), for piano and synthesizer, recorded by Australian pianist Lisa Moore — an exploration of another kind of virtuosity: the virtue of sound. In 2019, his fellow collaborator Rachel Hippert announced the release of her second studio album Profanum, featuring De La Chica’s early sacred songs. The album includes some of the most famous religious texts, such as Ave Maria, Pie Iesu, Stabat Mater and Gloria. In May of 2021, Russian Mezzo Soprano, Yana Mann, released her first studio album, premiering De La Chica's Cycle Op. 12, Poemas de Bar. The album, also produced by De La Chica himself, received very good reviews from the public, praising the composition, as well as Mann's voice.

Films

As a visual artist, De La Chica has worked with various independent producers and directors. His film score, for the short film Margaret, from the Lebanese director Badr Farha, won the Best Original Score award at the London Independent Film Awards. In 2018, the film Honor Up, directed by Damon Dash and produced by Kanye West, included seven works composed by De La Chica.

In March of 2020, De La Chica announced his first experimental film project, Agatha, directed and written by him. The project is based on his short story: Voyeuristic Images and is part of his piano cycle Op. 10. The film, an exploration of the solitude, was officially selected by more than 30 international film festivals and won several awards, including Best Picture, Best LGBTQ Film, Best Cinematography, Best Soundtrack and Best Actor.

At the end of 2021, De La Chica released his second film, Dora. This film follows the journeys of a Latina immigrant and her trans roommate/lover in New York City, and how the pandemic shattered their already-precarious stances. In additiion, at the end of February, De La Chica will release his first book, El Castigo de Dios (The Punishment of God). This is De La Chica’s first published literary work, based on the small Colombian town, Agua de Dios, and its extensive history in the 19th and 20th centuries as an isolated community created by the Colombian government to contain people with leprosy. In tandem with the forthcoming book, an opera of the same title, composed by De La Chica, is in its final creative stages.

Early life

De La Chica began his musical career in the classical tradition, studying piano at the age of five in his hometown, Manizales. During his early years, he immersed himself in the world of “classical music”,  developing a keen affinity with Baroque composers and symphonic sound. After high school he moved to Europe. Interested in spirituality and philosophy, he began studies of humanities in Salamanca (Spain), and also briefly studied philosophy and metaphysics in Madrid. He undertook self-guided studies, in Bad Münstereifel (Germany) reading classical literature, composition, and the study of dead languages. It was during this period that he composed pieces and essays about music, philosophy and spirituality, inspired by his readings of Garrigou-Langrange and Teresa de Avila. Finding himself dissatisfied with the conservative musical minds of the music schools, he decided against continuing his education formally in a conservatory.

De La Chica performs his music in different settings, ranging from electronic music bars to conventional classical stages. Since 2009, he has been a Baldwin Piano Company artist. He currently plays the custom-designed Baldwin: Heavy Metal piano. He is a founding member of the independent record label Irreverence Group Music (IGM) and lives in Brooklyn, NY.