Gabriela Ortiz (b.1964)

Latin GRAMMY-nominated Gabriela Ortiz is one of the foremost composers in Mexico today. A recipient of several honours and awards, her musical language achieves an extraordinary and expressive synthesis of tradition and the avant-garde; combining high art, folk and popular music in novel, frequently refined and always personal ways, achieving a balance between highly organized structure and improvisatory spontaneity.

Ortiz has written music for dance, theatre and cinema, and has actively collaborated with poets, playwrights and historians. Her creative process focuses on the connections between gender issues, social justice, environmental concerns and the burden of racism, as well as the phenomenon of multiculturality caused by globalisation, technological development, and mass migrations. She has composed three operas, in all of which interdisciplinary collaboration has been a vital experience.

Since 2016 Ortiz has been inducted to the Mexican Academy of Arts. In 2022 she became a member of the prestigious Colegio Nacional, an honorary society created in order to assemble Mexico’s foremost most distinguished artists, writers, scientist and philosophers. In 2022 she was appointed curator of the Pan-American Music Initiative along with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel. She also has been appointed Debs Composer’s Chair at Carnegie Hall for the 2024–25 season.

www.gabrielaortiz.com