Gabriela Ortiz (born 1964)
Gabriela Ortiz was born in Mexico City to a family of folk musicians. She continued a more formal education at the Ecole Normale de Musique in Paris, the National Conservatory of Music in Mexico City, and the Guildhall School in London. In 1996 she received her PhD from the University of London.
Gabriela Ortiz has composed for orchestras, chamber ensembles, solo instruments (including piano, clarinet, flute, piccolo, guitar, recorder, harp, and trumpet), and electronics. Although her music generally employs a modernist vocabulary, it is often highly rhythmic and colorful, incorporating a synthesis of various influences, including Mexican folk music and jazz.
This is a 1996 composition Atlas-Pumas for the unusual combination of violin and marimba:
Here are excerpts of another 1996 composition, Altar de Muertos (“altar of the dead”) for string quartet and tape:
This is a recent composition from 2020, Fractalis for piano and orchestra, with a lot of percussion as well: