介绍： 01 Ave! Chavín (1990) 8:28
02 Im-pulsos (1989) 10:53
03 Música para dos intérpretes virtuales (2000) 8:45
04 Texturas (1991) 13:06
05 Voces (2000) 9:47
Artwork – Apollo Studio
Composed By – José R. Sosaya
Directed By – Fernando Valcárcel (tracks: 04)
Ensemble – Ensamble Antara (tracks: 02), Ensemble des I...

介绍： 01 Ave! Chavín (1990) 8:28
02 Im-pulsos (1989) 10:53
03 Música para dos intérpretes virtuales (2000) 8:45
04 Texturas (1991) 13:06
05 Voces (2000) 9:47
Artwork – Apollo Studio
Composed By – José R. Sosaya
Directed By – Fernando Valcárcel (tracks: 04)
Ensemble – Ensamble Antara (tracks: 02), Ensemble des Instituts für Neue Musik (tracks: 01), Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional del Perú (tracks: 04)
Mastered By – Alberto Cendra Woodman*
JOSE R. SOSAYA
IM-PULSOS: Instrumental and electroacoustic music (1989-2000)

“Terceto Autóctono”, inspired in a poem by Cesar Vallejo, is a piece with which Jose R. Sosaya won the first place in the Choral Composition Competition the Municipality of Lima organized in 1981 and it was the same piece that introduced him to the musical scene and turned him into a hinge for a new period of composition in Peru, one that begins to unfold in the 80’s.

In those times being a young composer implied making oneself room in an uncertain context, not only because Peru was moving into one of the major crises in its history (terrorist violence, economic inflation and unemployment), but also because the conditions for production of music for concerts was very limited.

Most youngsters who by then began a carrier as composers opted to study and move abroad: Rajmil Fishman, José C. Campos, Rafael Junchaya, Edgardo Plasencia. This meant this generation got scattered making it difficult to map them, while, at the same time, it allowed for a flux of information which injected fresh air to composition in Peru.

Born in San Pedro de Lloc (La Libertad) in 1956, Jose Roberto Sosaya Wekselman moved to Lima by the mid 70’s to study at the National Conservatory of Music (in those times the National School of Music) where he had Edgar Valcarcel and Enrique Iturriaga as professors, two figures of the so called 50’s generation. Those were changing times thanks to Celso Garrido-Lecca who implemented the Traditional Music Workshops, teaching native musical instruments as part of social claimings and a nationalistic look which was brooded during the government of general Juan Velasco Alvarado, influencing the work of many composers such as como Aurelio Tello, Luis David Aguilar o Arturo Ruiz del Pozo. Looking for his own findings Sosaya traveled by the mid 80’s to France to study at the École Normale de Musique and at the National Conservatory at the Boulogne Region.

“When I lived in Lima my language was to look for, inconformity with what I heard, a little bit of defiance, not many technical elements and I didn’t have much information on contemporary music, I only knew Stravinsky, Bartok, Shostakovich and a little bit of Varése, technically I felt limited to go any further. When I went to France to study I also went to concerts, I saw the Ensemble Intercontemporain, I went to master classes by Ligeti, Stockhausen, Berio, Boulez and younger names such as Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Heinz Holliger. All of that quite shocked me at the beginning.”

It was thanks to Sergio Ortega, a Chilean composer established in Paris, that Jose R. Sosaya could clarify his restlessness and pull his ideas through. The charismatic personality of the Chilean was a far cry from the spare manner of the other teacher he had in Paris, Japanese Yoshihisa Taira, whom Sosaya remembers just by a “not bad” as the only comment for his recently composed chamber piece “Intermitencias”, a piece which signed his new creative stage relating him with an avant garde tradition. Sosaya had read a book called Vocal Games by a professor at Superior Conservatory in Paris, which described the way to work texts in groups, changing the disposition of singers on stage, moving experimental theatrical things, which he applied in another piece for flutes called “Im-pulsos” (1989). Being in Paris also brought him close to concrete and electronic music, he composed some pieces as part of his studies there, but it is not until his return to Lima that he begins his major exploration in such language.

In 1990 he is invited to Japan to be part of a Junta of Pacific Composers, headed by Chinese composer Chou Wen Chung, thanks to whom Sosaya deepens his knowledge on the use of exotic scales in the tradition of western music. Thanks to this trip (and the money he received for the commission of “Ave! Chavin”) he could also buy a Yamaha SY22 synthesizer. With this instrument he composed his first pieces (“Ejercicio Nº 1”, “ABS TrackSion” 1 and 2). A short time later he received an invitation to compose the soundtrack of a work by Mary Ann Vargas called “Maria Jose” which was premiered in New York. Upon her return to Lima Mary Ann brought Sosaya a digital miniDAT recorder. Already familiar with digital audio Sosaya prepared material for “Evocaciones”, a piece which came to be during his stay at the Laboratorio de Informatica y Electronica Musical in Madrid, in 1994, alongside with composer Adolfo Nuñez.

His interest in promoting electro acoustic music in Peru made him give some conferences and found the Centro de Investigacion y Desarrollo de la Musica Peruana (CEDIMP) with Americo Valencia in 1988 as well as the Grupo de Experimentacion y Creacion (GEC) in 1993 with Gilles Mercier. In both cases Sosaya took to organizing concerts which allowed for new Peruvian instrumental and electronic musical pieces to be known (pieces by Gilles Mercier, Rafael Junchaya, Edgardo Plasencia, José C. Campos, etc.) besides presenting fundamental pieces of the Peruvian electroacoustic tradition (Cesar Bolaños and Enrique Pinilla). The concerts produced were “Escuche Su Siglo”, “Música Peruana Contemporánea”, both from 1990, “Música Electroacústica Peruana” (1991) (first MIDI concert of Peruvian pieces) and “Música Peruana de Hoy” (1993).

It was precisely at the “Musica Peruana Contemporanea” concert that Sosaya premiered one of his most important pieces: “Ave! Chavin” (1991) commissioned by Patronato Popular y Porvenir. Written for guitar, clarinet, violin, cello, piano-organ and percussion, it was inspired by a Pre-Hispanic motif, a Chavin loom which represented a bird, a geometric iconography which was turned into a musical score. Sosaya’s radical atonal language, which is not pentatonic, manages to translate a tellurian environment which relates to work by Peruvian composers such as Celso Garrido-Lecca or Edgar Valcarcel who approached folk material with an avant-garde eye. From that same year comes another important piece for orchestra such as “Texturas” which evokes Peruvian landscapes in its movements.

With all of the experience put together up to that moment, José R. Sosaya could bring to reality the creation of the Laboratorio de Música Electroacústica at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música, in 1995. The laboratory was made up of very basic elements: a Yamaha SY77 synthesizer, a small 8 track mixer and a Pentium computer with a Cubase software. It is there that work by composers such as Julio Benavides, Federico Tarazona, Nilo Velarde, amongst others came to be known. For two years it was under Sosaya’s direction.

Meanwhile new technologies became more accessible in Peru hand in hand with economic growth and a free market economy which defined where the country was heading to. By the end of the 90’s and the beginning of the new millennium it was possible to have in Lima electronic music concerts and music festivals on a more frequent basis in the middle of a boom of new media art, where electronic art, video art and electronic music come together.

“Voces” and “Música para dos intérpretes virtuales” composed in 2000, are the last pieces of electro acoustic music he has composed up to date. The first is significant of the interest in the use of voice present in Sosaya’s work (it is in 2000 he creates his Ensamble Vocal Ariodante). In “Voces” there is an encounter and confrontation between ancient vocal music and contemporary vocal music, besides diverse vocal sounds which intertwine generating a new sonic weaving.

José R. Sosaya’s work is with no doubt one of the most important in the realm of Peruvian and Latin American contemporary music of the last 30 years. His great handling of modern composition resources and techniques bring him forth as a true master capable of synthesizing virtuosity and expressive force, dexterity and emotion. José R. Sosaya has reached in all justice an indispensable place in our recent musical history. (Luis Alvarado)