Ithaca College

The piece is entitled Wayra. Grossman's Chamber work, Mecanismos, will also be featured as part of Boston Musica Viva’s 2011-12 Season in February.

Jorge Grossmann looks back at his Peruvian heritage in Wayra a word meaning “wind” in Quechua and a term used by the ancient Andean peoples to represent the destruction and genocide that took place during the Spanish colonization.  Wayrapamushkas, or “sons of the wind” was the name given to the conquistadors, whom the indigenous people thought were supernatural creatures.  The piece is a restless tone poem in which orchestral gestures may well sound like a representation of wind, but its essence - and the inspiration for it - lies perhaps inside the minds of those ancient peoples, whose souls were tainted by terror and fear in the aftermath of a violent invasion, which they could only explain as a product of untamable mythical forces.

Jorge will travel to Lima to attend the performance and participate as guest composer in the 9th edition of the Festival Internacional de Musica Clasica Contemporanea. In addition, he and pianist and School of Music Lecturer Carolyn Grossmann will present a lecture/recital entitled Peruvian Composers of the Diaspora. They will both give masterclasses at the National Conservatory.

In February, he will travel to Boston to attend a performance of his septet Mecanismos by Boston Musica Viva. Founded in 1969 and described by The New York Times as “one of the finest new music ensembles in the United States” BMV has performed more than 592 works by 244 composers during its long career. These include 154 works written specifically for BMV and 169 world premieres.