La Calaca (“The Skull”), for string orchestra

The Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz composed La Calaca originally as the fourth movement of a forty-minute cycle for string quartet and Central American indigenous instruments called Altar de muertos (“Altar of the Dead”) in 1997. She revised it in 2021 and transformed it into an independent work for string orchestra, which was premiered by the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra at the Ojai Festival in September 2021 under the direction of composer John Adams. Ortiz was Festival Resident Composer that year, one of many signs of her growing reputation in the past few years. She has been especially championed by Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which has performed, among others of her works, her Kauyumari, Teének, and Yanga. Dudamel and the orchestra premiered and recorded her major ballet score Revolución diamantina, which was recently released on CD along with her violin concerto Altar de cuerda. The Boston Symphony Orchestra performed Revolución diamantina in its 2024-25 season. Her third opera, Luciérnaga (“Firefly”), was commissioned and produced by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México; Long Beach Opera produced her Únicamente la Verdad (“Only the Truth”) along with Mexico’s Opera de Bellas Artes. Her music is performed frequently throughout the U.S. and in England.

Ortiz’s sophisticated music frequently incorporates sounds and ideas from the folk music of Mexico. Her musician parents performed as part of the folk group Los Folkloristas, which was formed in part to conserve Latin American folk-music traditions. Ortiz attended Mexico’s National Conservatory and the National Autonomous University as well as the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London. She earned her doctoral degree at City University in London.

“La calaca,” translated here as “the skull,” is the familiar stylized figure of a skeleton in Mexico’s Day of the Dead festivities. Ortiz writes of her piece La Calaca, “This movement reflects a musical world full of joy, vitality and a great expressive force. At the end of La Calaca I decided to quote a melody of Huichol origin, which attracted me when I first heard it. That melody was sung by Familia de la Cruz. The Huichol culture lives in the State of Nayarit, Mexico. Their musical art is always found in ceremonial and ritual life.”

ROBERT KIRZINGER

Composer and writer Robert Kirzinger is the Boston Symphony Orchestra's Director of Program Publications.