Halfway through a FaceTime call, composer Angélica Negrón points out the birds chirping around her outside an Airbnb in her native Puerto Rico.
Negrón’s music tends to weave in such natural sounds. Marejada incorporates recordings of waves off a beach in Fajardo, and birds on another beach in Guánica, both of which are located in Puerto Rico. “I’m always trying to reconnect with the sounds, textures, colors and people I miss the most,” says Negrón, who’s lived in New York since 2006.
Even when she’s not engaging directly with the island, Negrón’s output evinces an underlying sense of longing. This emotion fuels her latest orchestral piece En otra noche, en otro mundo (On Another Night, In Another World), commissioned by the Dallas and National symphony orchestras.
Currently the DSO’s composer-in-residence, Negrón is part of the orchestra’s multi-year commitment to performing music by living women composers. Music director Fabio Luisi will conduct the world premiere of the work, on a program also including Beethoven’s Leonore Overture No. 1 and Violin Concerto, the latter with soloist Leonidas Kavakos.
The work takes inspiration from Alejandra Pizarnik’s short, eponymous poem, which in five short lines conveys yearning for a distant beloved.
Negrón says the poem’s title connects to “this idea of never being able to be fully present.” She associates that feeling with her movement between different cultures. “The more I go back and forth, I find myself struggling even more so with fully enjoying the present,” she says. “When I’m here [in Puerto Rico], I miss New York. That’s in a nutshell the diaspora experience.”
Negrón grew up in a household where music was “a very natural part of family gatherings,” especially around Christmas. Her mother is a skilled percussionist and player of the pandero (a small hand drum), even though she never studied music, Negrón says. And Negrón’s aunt trained as an opera singer.
As a young violinist in Puerto Rico, Negrón couldn’t imagine composition as a possibility because all the music she performed in orchestra was by dead white men. But an obsession with film music led her to discovering composition in her early 20s. After undergraduate studies at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, she completed a master’s in composition at New York University.
Now 39, Negrón is based in Brooklyn, where she lives with her husband, José Olivares. Together they founded the electronic indie band Balún.
Negrón’s home office is filled with photos of drag queens and female musicians and composers, including Björk, Juana Molina and Meredith Monk. “I want to surround myself with creative voices that feel gigantic and unobtainable to me,” she says.
Negrón first learned about Monk through her cover of Björk’s “Gotham Lullaby.” “I love that she’s very serious about her craft, but she never takes herself too seriously,” Negrón says about Monk. “So there’s lightness, playfulness and humor, which I miss a lot in new music, and classical music in general.”
Negrón is also drawn to how Monk layers instruments and voices to create “otherworldly” textures. Similarly, Negrón’s music often conjures up immersive atmospheres by combining electronic sounds with acoustic instruments.
As other influences, Negrón cites former DSO composer-in-residence Julia Wolfe, John Cage — particularly in his erasure of the distinctions between noise and music — and the Estonian Arvo Pärt. Negrón says hearing Pärt’s enchantingly simple piano piece, Für Alina, “completely changed” her life.
Für Alina is the earliest example of Pärt’s distinctive tintinnabuli (Latin for “little bells”), evoking the resonance of bells. Negrón employs this technique in En otra noche, en otro mundo. “Crotales, percussion bell sounds and harp are at the heart of the piece,” says Negrón, who collects bells and likes using them in her music.
Although Negrón chose the piece’s title in 2019, it’s taken on new meaning during the pandemic. A year ago, it certainly seems like we were living in another world. Looking back now, all we can do is dream.
Details
Live performances at the Meyerson Symphony Center are sold out, but a video of the program will be available from Feb. 12 at dallassymphony.org. $10. 214-849-4376.
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