Assorted Works of Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa

On Friday, November 3 at 4 p.m., the Qualcomm Institute (QI) invites you to enjoy select works from UC San Diego alumnus and New York University Associate Professor of Music Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa.

La Rosa will present the experimental documentary “Canteros” (2017), the work “Silbadores 4.1” (2015), and snippets of a new work in progress, yet untitled, featuring close-mic recordings of a hummingbird in the city of Lima, letting through the world around it and engaging issues of grief, the anthroposphere and postcoloniality.

“Canteros (quarrymen)” is an experimental documentary by filmmaker Diego Oliver. The music for this documentary is made with the sounds of the Cantero’s labor, and imagines a time-compressed multi-century soundscape of all the hammering that it takes to make those human-made canyons in Arequipa, Peru.

“Silbadores 4.1” uses and transforms the sounds of whistling vessel jars, archaeological musical instruments from the Andes. These instruments work by connecting two ceramic vessels and filling them with water; when moving them, water displacement generates air pressure that activates a whistle in unpredictable patterns. Due to a lack of pictorial representations, archaeologists are uncertain about whether they were musical instruments or not. I recognize in the sound of these jars the sound of several birds of the Peruvian coast, and would contend that these vessels might have been a “recording device” of sorts; a device that would allow one to hear a sound away from its source, its place and time. This work is an attempt to move away from the idea of a mystic pre-columbian virgin music. Using visual art patterns found in ceramics and textiles as a point of departure, the piece generates geometric and angular processes that contrast the fluidity created by the sounds of water, air, clay, and human gesture. I recorded these sounds in 2004-6, in the National Museum of Archeology of Perú in collaboration with the

Waylla Kepa project. This audition is dedicated to Milano Trejo.

Biography

Jaime E. Oliver La Rosa (Lima, 1979) is an Associate Professor of Music at New York University, where he has taught since 2013. He lived and studied music in Peru until 2006, received his Ph.D. in Computer Music with Miller Puckette from the University of California, San Diego in 2011 and subsequently held a Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship at Columbia University (2011-13). 

His music and research explore the role musical instruments play in shaping musical practice and material culture at large, as well as the role that Latin American avant gardes have played in Western Music. His creative work has been featured in international festivals and conferences, working independently and collaborating with several composers, improvisers and artists in a field of action that spans sound performance and installation, composing and performing music, and programming open source software.

Professional recognitions include scholarships and grants from the Fulbright Commission, the University of California, Meet the Composer, the Ministry of Culture of Spain, and composition and research residencies at ZKM and IRCAM. He was awarded the Frances Densmore prize from the American Musical Instrument Society 2020, FETA Sound Arts prize in 2018, FILE PRIX LUX 2010 in São Paulo Brazil, a GIGA-HERTZ-PREIS 2010 from ZKM, Germany, and the 1st prize in the 2009 Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech.