Suite de Gargantúa for woodwind quintet and string quartet (2009)
I. Dolores del parto y nacimiento de Gargantúa
II. Durante la noche, Gargantúa se dirige a Paris
III. Genealogía de Gargantúa
IV. “Los padres de Gargantúa: Grandgousier y Garganelle”
V. “Gargantúa y las campanas de Nôtre Dame”
VI. “Canción de cuna de Gargantúa”
VII. “Gargantúa se divierte”
Commissioned by Quintet of the Americas with funds provided by The Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, premiered March 10, 2010 with Cuarteto Latinoamericano at the Americas Society, NYC
For woodwind quintet and string quartet
Born in Mexico City, Mario Lavista (1943-2021) studied with famous Mexican composers Carlos Chavez, Hector Quintanar and Rodolfo Halffter. Later he studied in Paris in courses with such greats as Nadia Boulanger and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He has been active in improvisation, electronic music and interdisciplinary projects as well as film scoring. His use of extended techniques of traditional instruments is in evidence in Marsias. In 1982, he founded Pauta, one of the most important music journals in Latin America. In 1987, he received a Guggenheim Fellowship for opera Aura, based on the short story by Carlos Fuentes. He was a member of the board of editors of Ediciones Mexicanas de Música since 1979 and a regular collaborator with the Ballet Nacional de México since 1988. He also co-founded the Asociación de Amigos del Museo Nacional de Virreinato in 1988 and served as a musical advisor to the Consejo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes from 1990-98 and to the Instituto Cultural Domecq from 1994-98. In addition, he organized numerous events on Mexican music and served on many panels. He taught in Mexico and abroad, especially in North American institutions, including the University of Chicago, Cornell University, the University of California San Diego, Indiana University and McGill University. He also frequently lectured and participated in forums, seminars, symposia, and workshops in the Americas and Europe and taught as a composer-in-residence or visiting professor at Indiana University, the University of Chicago, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Wisconsin.
For more information on Mario Lavista:
http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/lavistam.htm