PASSION AND PURPOSE
- Anastasia Stanmeyer
- Jun 26
- 5 min read
GABRIELA ORTIZ TAKES THE HELM AT THE FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC
THE 2025 FESTIVAL OF CONTEMPORARY MUSIC (FCM) at Tanglewood promises
to be one of the most memorable in the festival’s history, thanks in large part to the leadership and presence of Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz. Fresh off a landmark year in her career—including three Grammy® wins for her genre-defying album Revolución diamantina, a celebrated residency at Carnegie Hall, and international acclaim for her musical works exploring gender violence, migration, and cultural identity—Ortiz is channeling her voice to curate one of classical music’s most influential summer festivals.
This year’s FCM stretches across five days, from July 24 to 28, and once again affords Tanglewood Music Center (TMC) Fellows the opportunity to explore unfamiliar repertoire and experience the value of direct collaboration with living composers. As FCM director, Ortiz has built a program that amplifies her own music alongside Cuban, Mexican, Central American, and American composers, offering a bold reimagination of what contemporary music can sound like and stand for. “One of the main points for me is to highlight the music of America as a whole continent,” Ortiz says. “That includes all of Latin America—not just Mexico. We have amazing composers in countries that deserve to be heard, and that’s not happening enough. Certainly not the way I’d like it to.”
Ortiz’s vision for FCM is unapologetically inclusive and proudly Latin American, positioning vibrant traditions and evolving soundscapes in a manner that highlight their roles in the global classical music conversation. She explains that many of the important European classical music festivals still focus on European schools of music, including spectralism, Darmstadt School, and established German and French composers from the European classical music canon. While Ortiz is grateful to have studied those traditions and respects the artistic impact of those composers, she is proud to celebrate her own musical heritage with her programming choices. “I didn’t grow up in Europe,” she says. “I grew up in Mexico City. My music and aesthetic are different.”
That key cultural difference is at the heart of Ortiz’s programming for the festival, inspiring her to feature music that will explore transnational identities, cultural migration, feminist resistance, and the legacy of Latin America. The programming also emphasizes the tradition of intergenerational collaboration in Latin American music, including a pedagogical lineage that she has direct ties to. In line with that, Ortiz has included works by her teacher Mario Lavista, Lavista’s mentor Carlos Chávez, and Ortiz’s own student Diana Syrse. “At Tanglewood, you’ll hear four generations of Mexican composers,” she explains. “Chávez wrote Tambuco in the 1960s. Lavista studied with him. I studied with Lavista. And now Diana studies with me. That continuum is part of our cultural DNA—and this festival is an ideal place to showcase it.”
The Mexcian contemporary classical percussion ensemble Tambuco will serve as FCM’s ensemble-in-residence. They will perform selections that include Chávez’s Tambuco (a piece which, coincidentally, served as the inspiration name of their group), as well as Lavista’s Músicas de Cristal, and Ortiz’s own Pico-Bite-Beat. The ensemble also will work with TMC Fellows, giving students a rare chance to perform these works under the guidance of musicians directly connected to their cultural origin. “It’s going to be very interesting for the students and the audience to hear this authentic performance with the real instruments, using all the notations Chávez wrote in the score,” says Ortiz.
Ortiz also has doubled down on her commitment to use her music and platform to address societal issues in Mexico on the global stage. Her ascent to the top tier of contemporary classical music reached a thrilling new height with the release of Revolución diamantina, her first orchestral portrait album. The project, recorded by the Los Angeles Philharmonic under Gustavo Dudamel and featuring the Los Angeles Master Chorale, won three Grammy® Awards, including Best Contemporary Classical Composition.
But the subject matter of Revolución diamantina is no celebration of glittering acclaim or star-studded red carpets; it is an artistic reckoning with the 2019 feminist protests in Mexico City, which were sparked by state inaction on gender violence. “The best way I can talk about it is through my music,” says Ortiz. The piece incorporates Mexican urban rhythms, samba motifs, and choral chants, echoing the revolutionary and resilient spirit of the protests. “My aim was to bring the protest into the concert hall,” she says. “I wanted the audience to feel the anger of the women, and I wanted them to feel like they were in the streets themselves.”
While the album’s success introduced her work to a much wider audience, it also sparked some cultural criticism from her Mexican contemporaries. “People said that I was commercial or that I wasn’t protesting in the streets,” says Ortiz. “But no one tells me what to write. I do it because I need to. The piece came from my deepest convictions, not because I thought it would win any awards.”
Building upon those convictions, FCM will also explore the theme of fluid physical and psychological borders through music. Pieces like Liquid Borders and Exilios address the tensions and tragedies that accompany displacement. “Nature itself is about migration,” notes Ortiz. “Birds migrate. The world’s greatest music is born from migration.” In Liquid Borders, a multi-movement work for percussion ensemble, Ortiz uses different musical textures to evoke various types of human experiences at international and regional borders: the tension between cities and rural life, the tragic violence of the U.S.-Mexico border, and the harrowing journeys of Central American migrants crossing through Mexico.
“For the urban parts,” says Ortiz, “I used cans and metallic instruments to create that industrial sound. For the desert border, I turned to rattles and ethnic instruments to invoke the natural environment. For the jungle, I used keyboards to capture that thick, humid atmosphere. It’s all metaphoric—but also very real.”
Ortiz views her role not just as a composer, but as a cultural communicator—one with a duty to live passionately and reflect on life deeply. “The fuel of my creativity is life itself. My dreams are shaped by what is happening in the world—and that’s what’s feeding my music.”
Her recent composer-in-residence roles at Carnegie Hall, Curtis Institute, and now as the leader of FCM, have allowed her to further that mission. “These opportunities are huge for promoting my work—and for revisiting older works that haven’t been performed in years. At Tanglewood, they’ll be playing my flute concerto, Altar de viento, which was only ever performed once. I just revised the score. Hearing it again helps me grow as an artist.” That growth, she hopes, will be a powerful catalyst of social change. “These students who are future composers and performers—they need to know that. Music is not just entertainment. It’s a form of activism.”
As she prepares to lead one of the most ambitious contemporary music festivals in the world, Ortiz remains grounded. “I depend on performers. I depend on institutions. Music doesn’t exist until it’s played,” she says. “It’s isolated when you compose—but then it becomes collective.”
Asked what advice she would give to young Latin American composers hoping to follow in her footsteps, Ortiz doesn’t hesitate. “First, passion. Without passion, you’re in the wrong profession,” she says. “But you also need discipline. Music isn’t a sport. You have to practice every day and live your life. Intensely. Fall in love. Take walks. Smell the trees. Everything can be part of your creativity. Above all—listen. To yourself. In silence. That’s when you begin to really hear the music.”
The Festival of Contemporary Music, July 24 to 28, will be at Tanglewood’s Seiji Ozawa Hall and Studio E., Linde Center for Music and Learning. Go to bso.org/tanglewood for the lineup and more.
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