Spotify Classical new releases
Amazing News! Spotify's classical curator added my work Voyeurisitc Images Op. 10, No. , to the Classical New releases playlist.
Amazing News! Spotify's classical curator added my work Voyeurisitc Images Op. 10, No.1 , to the Classical New releases playlist.
Gracias por escuchar!!!!
J
Agatha - The film
I am very excited to share with you, that this morning, I received 2 big news. The first one, it was that my first film project I directed Agatha has been “Officially Selected” by the BFFF (Berlin Flash Film Festival).
I am very excited to share with you, that this morning, I received 2 big news. The first one, it was that my first film project I directed Agatha has been “Officially Selected” by the BFFF (Berlin Flash Film Festival). And the second one, only received a few minutes later, is that the film won the “Urban Art — best soundtrack 2020" award at the BUFF (Berlin Underground Film Festival).
I can only say that this has been possible thanks to the collaboration of Augusto Guzmán, who gave life to the film’s protagonist (Próspero), the immaculate photography of Junting Zhou. (Btw, if you do not know his work, see the doc he made about Cov-19 and that was published by New York Times recently. (https://nyti.ms/3aC2hKm)and the production of Irreverence Group Music.
I would also like to thank filmmaker Aulio Ivan Ortiz Perez and his mother, Altagracia Mencía Pérez for playing the role of Francisca, the Mother, and also to John Garcia for his sound design.
I take this opportunity, to also thank my filmmakers, artists, photographers and writers friends for having been there always with good advice. My dear Badr Farha, Ana Paula Feier and Vlad Feier, Susan Campos Fonseca and her poetry and Sophy and her support in translation. Amigos de siempre Ilona Miller, el primer publico Carlos Del Risco Jaramillo, Rodrigo Fajardo, Jaime Davila, JP Wright and of course to Miguel and Gabi for always being there supporting my ideas.
Agata is a visual experiment that is based on my story Voyeuristic Images, which is also part of my piano cycle Op. 10 and that I premiered in Dec 2019 at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music. The story tells a experience that I lived 11 years ago when I moved to NY, and that still, I remember very well.
"For Aniela" is out today!
During the summer, I visited Auschwitz for the first time. I do not think there are words to describe what I felt. In one of the buildings, in a very sad hall, there were pictures of some of the victims.
Dear friends
For Aniela my new single for Cello & piano, recorded with American Cellist Benjamin Larsen, is out!
During the summer, I visited Auschwitz for the first time. I do not think there are words to describe what I felt. In one of the buildings, in a very sad hall, there were pictures of some of the victims. Due to the line of people waiting to enter, I had to wait in the middle of the hall. Then there was this photo of a woman, her name was Aniela... her eyes said everything... I composed this piece in her honor, on my way back to Krakow. And yes, the photo on the cover, is her. Dear Aniela, there are not words, but there is music...
aniela - the recording
Auschwitz Photos by Julián De La Chica
Lisa Moore Live in NYC | Music by Philip Glass & Julián De La Chica
Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 8:00 PM @ The DiMenna Center in New York City, Lisa Moore will World Premiere her new CD: Julián De La Chica's Preludes Op. 8 (For piano and synthesizer) produced and published by Brooklyn based, independent record label, Irreverence Group Music (IGM).
Wednesday, October 17, 2018, 8:00 PM @ The DiMenna Center in New York City, Celebrated pianist Lisa Moore will World Premiere her new CD: Julián De La Chica's Preludes Op. 8 (for piano and synthesizer) produced and published by Brooklyn based, independent record label Irreverence Group Music (IGM). For the first part of the concert, Ms. Moore chose works by American composer Philip Glass: Etude No. 2, Metamorphosis II and Satyagraha Act III, Conclusion. Australian pianist Lisa Moore has been described as “brilliant and searching… beautiful and impassioned… lustrous at the keyboard” (The New York Times), “visionary” and "New York’s queen of avant-garde piano” (The New Yorker).
Ms. Moore will perform with composer De La Chica on synthesizer.
Lisa Moore
De La Chica: Prelude Op. 8 No. 13
Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5, the "Behind the Scenes"
Independent record label, Irreverence Group Music - IGM presents: Nocturnal and circular images Op. 5 - The behind the Scenes. Exclusive and raw images about the album's recording and some intimate moments with composer and pianist Julián De La Chica. Featuring tracks like Fado, introspective, Etude and others, De La Chica gives us his thoughts on minimalism, being a composer today and some of his inspirations in life and in music.
Independent record label, Irreverence Group Music - IGM presents: Nocturnal and circular images Op. 5 - The behind the Scenes. Exclusive and raw images about the album's recording and some intimate moments with composer and pianist Julián De La Chica. Featuring tracks like Fado, introspective, Etude and others, De La Chica gives us his thoughts on minimalism, being a composer today and some of his inspirations in life and in music.
The Music
New York based, Colombian pianist and composer Julián De La Chica wrote the Nocturnal & Circular images Op. 5 in 2014 which premiered in December 2014 a the Saint Joseph’s Brooklyn Cathedral. The Cycle Op. 5 is a group of 10 pieces written for the piano, inspired by different night scenes, situations and/or characters. The work suggests a direct relationship between everyday sound and inner images that we create or concoct. The work contains a simple and clean composition form, notes that repeat indefinitely, raw and free textures and static harmonic cycles. In this work, Mr. De La Chica continues the series that began in 2011 with the cycle Op. 4, in which he experimented with genres such as Latin, hip hop, techno and pop, creating 11 night-time images based on situations that happened in New York City.
Julián De La Chica
Photo by Hassan Malik
In the Cycle Op. 5, Mr. De La Chica seeks to strip the piano bare, reaching a sound that is void of interpretative recourse. Musicologist, composer and writer Susan Campos - Fonseca refers to the work as "ascetic" in her musings on "musical excess" and, in discussing the music of De La Chica, speaks of a "Trans-minimal aggression". According to Ms. Campos - Fonseca: “Listening from this perspective can be daunting to the contemporary ear; the idea of complexity as synonymous with quality, the saturation of the sound landscape and productions that represent the so-called post-post-symphonic great culture deafen us ... why? The reason lies in our need for saturation, rational self-complacency in excess, in the spectacle where nudity is not enough, where open flesh and blood, even death, do not sate us. No, we will not find that in the music of Julián De La Chica. It is writ large across the works that make up this experience: the aggression of the minimum lies there"...
Composer Julián de la Chica & Ryan Streber at Oktaven Audio, Yonkers, NY
Photo by Hassan Malik
Album Notes
Julián De La Chica considers himself to be an "experimenter”, not a "composer". However, he composes a micro-universe from naked atomic sound. The skin is a set of pores traversed by particles of world. The music De La Chica explores the liminal atomic spaces between these pores and the world.
The Cycle Op. 5 shown in this album does not speak of the Colombian composer living in New York city; It is a pilgrimage. The piano is the only trace of this journey of identity which is, in short, destruction. The inner sound, is the deepest for those who create from the musical abyss. Sound culture around us weaves nets like mermaid songs and Penelope mantles ... he who seeks his sound needs to choose; and home is not always Ithaca.
Julián De La Chica, as Samuel Beckett, knows that companionship is being "alone" and, as in the nighttime images of William Blake, speaks of the unfathomable path with the smallest gesture of a human hand. In his Cycle Op. 5, De La Chica opens the "metaphysical box" called piano, which imagined Oteiza, like a beloved body, sole companion, minimum.
Susan Campos - Fonseca, PhD
Musicologist and composer.
the artist
Julián De La Chica is a Colombian composer, pianist and record producer based in Brooklyn, NY, whose influences range from American minimalism to the alternative and electronic scene. His work, most of the time inspired by everyday images, the search of personal spiritual reflection and the inner darkness, mixes piano, strings, and classical singers, with electronic keyboards and controllers, crossing over from classical to ambient/electronic music.
+info:
Julian De La Chica debuts at Carnegie Hall
Monday, March 28, 2016, 7:30 pm, @ Carnegie Hall in New York City, Irreverence Group Music - IGM celebrates the album's release of alternative singer Radmila Lolly. The concert premieres works by New York based Colombian composer Julián De La Chica: String Quartet No.1 Op. 7 performed by the cutting edge Scorchio Quartet and Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op. 6 performed by Tenor José Heredia. De La Chica, a post minimalist, takes on the challenge of exploring different ways of listening to the world.
Monday, March 28, 2016, 7:30 pm, @ Carnegie Hall in New York City, Irreverence Group Music - IGM celebrates the album's release of alternative singer Radmila Lolly. The concert premieres works by New York based Colombian composer Julián De La Chica: String Quartet No.1 Op. 7 performed by the cutting edge Scorchio Quartet and Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op. 6 performed by Tenor José Heredia. De La Chica, a post minimalist, takes on the challenge of exploring different ways of listening to the world.
Program
Preludes Op. 8 (*)
No. 1Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5
No. 1 Illumination
No. 6 Retrospective
String Quartet No. 1 Op. 7 (*)
No. 1
No. 2
No. 3
No. 4
No. 5
Intermission
Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op. 6 (*)
No. 1 Jengibre
No. 2 Libertad
No. 3 Eros
No. 4 Autodestrucción
Präludium: (Aufruf) Gesegnete Dunkelheit (*)
Ave Maria (*)
(*) World Premiere
Program Notes
The modern age is all about saturation. The music of Julián De La Chica takes on the challenge of exploring different ways of listening to the world. Listening to this perspective can be daunting to the contemporary ear. The notion of complexity as synonymous with quality, the saturation of the sound landscape and productions that represent the so-called post-post-symphonic great culture deafens us ... why? The reason lies in our need for saturation, rational self-complacency in excess, in the spectacle where nudity is not enough; where open flesh and blood, even death, do not sate us …
The works gathered in this concert tie a sole string. They are the anatomy of a knot, as in the Japanese art of shibari literally "bind" the saturated body, and this bond, releasing the possibility of sensuality and sophisticated listening. In the first half of the concert, a selection of Mr. De La Chica's works for piano: Prelude Op. 8 No. 1 (Premiere) and Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5, No.1 Illumination and No. 6, Retrospective (Included in his latest album: Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5 - IGM, 2015) accompany the premiere of his String Quartet No. 1 Op. 7 (V Cycles) performer by the Scorchio Quartet, known by its versatility and sound in music ranging from Philip Glass to David Bowie.
Mr. De La Chica composed a piece for a string quartet that communes with his Cycle Op. 5. This work does not speak of the Colombian composer living in New York City; it is a pilgrimage. The piano and the string quartet are traces of this journey of identity which is, in short, destruction. The inner sound, is the deepest for those who create from the musical abyss. Sound culture around us weaves nets like mermaid songs and Penelope mantles ... he who seeks his sound needs to choose; and home is not always Ithaca. Mr. De La Chica, as Samuel Beckett, knows that companionship is being "alone" and, as in the nighttime images of William Blake, speaks of the unfathomable path with the smallest gesture of a human hand.
The Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op.6, written for string quartet, two singers and Soprano/tenor soloist, are based on short stories written by the composer during his first months living in New York. The Scorchio Quartet and tenor José Heredia explore the possibility of the stories as fractures where light eventually enters. Anthony Majewski and Elisa Nikoloulias from the Young New Yorkers’ Chorus perform voices making "noise", evoking the soundscape of everyday repetition. The set is a look at this meeting place where everyone is alone. The big city gives them a break when they simply sit and listen as ephemeral flowers on a table at the Standard Hotel.
Präludium: (Aufruf) Gesegnete Dunkelheit and Ave Maria, as in Mr. De La Chica's Mandala cycle (Album Minimal Aggression - IGM, 2015) the ascetic exercise to which the composer is subjected, imposes the maximum restriction of means, looking for a minimum that is full of possibility, concludes as it initiates, taking the aegis of cycles Op. 5, 6 and 7. The image of a room in the middle of nowhere, and absolute self-awareness in that one room, are the essence of these works.
The concert is based on a single principle: think saturation from the possibility of a "Trans-minimal-aggression". Mr. De La Chica considers himself to be an "experimenter", not a "composer". However, he creates a micro-universe from atomic naked sound. The skin is a set of pores traversed by particles of world. The music of Mr. De La Chica explores the liminal atomic spaces between these pores and the world.
Susan Campos - Fonseca, PhD
Musicologist and composer
Radmila Lolly
Scorchio Quartet &
Julián De La Chica
Photo by Hassan Malik
The artistic life of Julian De La Chica
By Ricardo Díaz De La Vega
When I was a young boy I remember reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and finding myself profoundly surprised by the first lines of the novel as if it was a prophecy, asking for who would later become the most legendary character, a paradigm of the world that she dreamed: “Who is John Galt?” Without a doubt and with the same confidence that he can distinguish between talent and improvisation, natural and artificial, I must start these lines asking: Who is Julián de la Chica?
When I was a young boy I remember reading Ayn Rand’s “Atlas Shrugged” and finding myself profoundly surprised by the first lines of the novel as if it was a prophecy, asking for who would later become the most legendary character, a paradigm of the world that she dreamed: “Who is John Galt?” Without a doubt and with the same confidence that he can distinguish between talent and improvisation, natural and artificial, I must start these lines asking: Who is Julián de la Chica?
Julian De La Chica
Photo by Marc Tousignant
If we must say something about El Vagabundo del Piano, as the audience calls him, it is that even his life looks like a myth, some legend or fiction. He’s a real character, and his life is more than anything a series of nonequivalent realities, and when he puts it out there, we can see a thousand perspectives of multiple dimensions. Through his own personal experiences, Julian takes us to different places, stories and travels that personify a certain theme for a novel, and maybe that’s why (intentionally or not) he reached to become that character that a lot of people dream about. But he has also reached the moral line of the legendary “Hero of Rand”, and he simply had always displayed only his true self and his passion for his work through his utmost dedication, effort and imagination. This incredible commitment is what separates a genius from an average person.
Julian De La Chica
Photo by Marc Tousignant
“However, it was not until the age of 7 where Julian started his true artistic journey with his first debut performance. He remembers, “my feet couldn’t reach the pedals” and had to wear a tuxedo that his mom rented for $2 from a costume shop”
His romance with music started when he was 4 years old, and started learning to playing the piano through private lessons with music professor Martha Londoño, who taught him everything in regards to vocals and the musical alphabet. Soon after he improved his technique and solfeggio with other professors until he entered the University of the Arts for children and started to receive lessons from the great Olga Gonzalez. However, it was not until the age of 7 where Julian started his true artistic journey with his first debut performance. He remembers, “my feet couldn’t reach the pedals” and had to wear a tuxedo that his mom rented for $2 from a costume shop. Then came the concerts, which was a in fact a rare mix of the life of a child and that of a prodigy that was being recognized and celebrated by his talent: in school events, in music competitions, Christmas and New Year acts, in which we would find Julian living the reason why he was brought into this world in the first place. His first grand performance (after his debut) came when he was only 14 years old in a fully booked auditorium with more than 2000 people. His performances mainly included classic compositions, and during those times Julian was very influenced by romantic composers, particularly Beethoven. Even then you could have already visualized the variations and the style that eventually would define a true genius.