James Diaz

New York-based composer James Diaz (b. 1990) is the winner of the 2015 National Prize of Music in Composition by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia for his Concerto for Percussion Trio and Orchestra, Saturn Lights. As winner of the 2014 Prize of Music in Composition for the reopening of the Teatro Colón, his orchestral piece Eclosion was premiered by conductor Claudio Cruz and the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia and recently has been recorded by the conductor Cecilia Espinosa and the EAFIT Symphony Orchestra for the upcoming album, New Colombian Music for Orchestra. Diaz has also won several competitions for his chamber and wind ensemble music, including the 2015 Coral and Symphony Composition Award by the Bogotá Philharmonic, the 2013 Composition Prize of the International Winter Festival of Campos do Jordão for his string quartet Dynamics of Meteorite and the XV National Award for Musical Composition City of Bogotá by the Bogotá Philharmonic for his work Iron Curtains. Diaz studied composition with Moisés Bertrán, Harold Vázquez and Gustavo Parra at the National Conservatory of Music, where he received his B.M. in Composition in 2015. He was a two-time Composition Fellow at the International Winter Festival of Campos do Jordao, Brazil; and is currently pursuing an M.M. in Composition at the Manhattan School of Music, where he is studying composition with Reiko Fueting.

From infinity for orchestra is an imaginary perspective of an unreal landscape. The work is mainly composed by the juxtaposition and contraposition of colorful textures that present different points of view of this temporal reality. The unreal landscape is inspired by the question “What would be our reaction if we could see our planet, our home, our bodies from a long distance?” As an answer, I created a nonexistent plane that will take us from common spaces to distorted atmospheres. Floating bright and suspended patterns and textures represent a sort of spatial aloneness. On the other hand, a fanfare-like texture evokes a kind of human spirit that is full of energy, unstable and heavy. The first sketch of the piece was composed in Bogotá in 2015, and it was finished one year later in New York City in 2016.
~James Diaz