Arditti String Quartet & Stefano Scodanibbio JULIO ESTRADA Chamber Music for Strings

Estrada was born in Mexico City, where his family had been exiled from Spain since 1941. He began his musical studies in Mexico from 1953–65, where he studied composition with Julián Orbón. In Paris from 1965-69 he studied with Nadia Boulanger, Olivier Messiaen and attended courses and lectures of Iannis Xenakis. In Germany he studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen in 1968 and with György Ligeti in 1972. He completed a Ph.D in Musicology at Strasbourg University from 1990–1994. Since 1974 he became researcher in music at the UNAM Instituto de Investigaciones Estéticas, where he was appointed as the Chair of a project on Mexican Music History and as the head of "Música, Sistema Interactivo de Investigación y Composición", a musical system designed by himself. He is the first music scholar to be honored as member of the Science Academy of Mexico, and by the Mexican Education Ministry as National Researcher since 1984, and since 1985 at the top level. He created the Laboratorio de Creación Musical at UNAM, where he has been teaching theory and philosophy of musical creation.

Neo-renaissance man Julio Estrada has already made his mark clearly through publications in Mexican musicology, aesthetics, and music theory. Now for the first time, his groundbreaking music is available outside of Mexico. Armed with Xenakis-mathematics and a poetic heart, Estrada has welded his research in Native American music with the most radical compositional techniques to forge an absolutely new sound! Glissandi and "noise" effects constitute Estrada's new language, capable of discourse on the 21st-century relevance of Aztec mythology. Structurally, Estrada's escape from time fits with the Scelsi-Nono-Dumitrescu continuum. Excellent notes and bibliography enhance this essential recording. (Robert Reigle)