Oscar Edelstein
Encyclopedia
Oscar Edelstein is an original contemporary composer from Argentina
. Known for creativity and inventiveness, frequently he is described as leading Latin America
’s avant-garde
. He is also a pianist, conductor, and researcher.
Edelstein was born in La Paz
, in the province of Entre Ríos
. He spent his childhood in Paraná
, Entre Rios’ capital, a city known for its river Paraná, South America’s second longest river, and its name drawn from the Tupi
language meaning "like the sea" due to it’s width. Entre Rios is literally the province “between rivers” and for a short time it was an independent republic – a spirit it has maintained to this day and that has had an impact on Edelstein.
Edelstein is from a family of musicians but his father, a road engineer, inspired him also with a love of machines and technology. He triggered Edelstein's desire to compose by a birthday present at the age of five of a Geloso
portable tape recorder. It was his first instrument and tool for composition before the piano.
His early interest in creating music was not easy for many of his schoolteachers to understand. To them all the important composers were dead, therefore it was up to Edelstein to prove that this was not true. Discovering information about living composers while living in a small province was not straightforward and required Edelstein’s insatiable curiosity and persistent questioning. He was fortunate to have the imagination and open-mindedness of many of his family and teachers who brought some of the answers he needed. One piano teacher, Eva Taubas, was significant for allowing him at seven to “improvise Beethoven” in his lessons, in a sense showing him it was possible, as Edelstein puts it, “to destroy Beethoven” and construct something new.
recording, hoping to encourage him to be a classic concert pianist but in fact she gave Edelstein the big argument he needed to define his future. He remembers saying, “He has said all that you can say in this language so let me try something different.”
He had a special relationship with the piano and his desire was to be another kind of player, seeing that the piano could either be a bed or a ship.
Conservatoire, at the age of eleven, to try to begin his study of harmony and counterpoint as an unofficial student. The teacher told his mother, “Oscar is un-usually gifted but he really needs to be better at following the rules.” His mother looked at Oscar in agreement, however when the teacher continued with advice about how the young Edelstein would also need to follow the rules more strictly in order to make his own musical experience, his mother looked at the teacher and said, “You are the professor, but he is the music.” This kind of environment gave Edelstein the conviction that he could be the creative source, something he still respects to this day whenever he teaches.
Edelstein was also encouraged by a provocative “anarchist” uncle who told him, “You can believe in God if you want, but look at the priests and the rabbis, look at their faces and tell me, if God existed and was intelligent would he really need to chose this face to speak to you?” Edelstein took the underlying message of all these experiences to mean that he could be the source of the music, and therefore in his searches to become a composer he needed to link directly to composers, authors and artists. With this in mind he began his lifetime search for originality that fuelled years of intense private study.
Transoceanic Radio, as a young boy, he continued to seek out “living composers.” There was Argentina’s national radio station broadcasting concerts from Teatro Colón far away in Buenos Aires
, stations from the BBC World Service
, from Japan, and all over the world; and when asked by students, at a master class in London and in Birmingham in 2007, how a person from such a small town could become interested in contemporary music, he told a story that he has often told, describing how sitting listening to the radio in a car at night, with the rain, and a storm, and the sound of the river, he never quite knew what was the music and what was the interference
.
Still asking difficult questions that were difficult to answer, Edelstein discovered Juan Laurentino Ortiz, Argentina’s poet most highly respected by other writers, artists and musicians who spent the last years of his life in Paraná. Juan L. Ortiz was to have a profound impact on Edelstein, and through many hours sat by the river talking, became a mentor and guide, for it was only he that had the connection to a world of literature, music and culture that could begin to answer Edelstein’s intense curiosity. Many intellectuals, young people and important cultures figures came to visit Ortiz, so when he discovered news of Stockhausen he shared it with Edelstein, as well as introducing him to other great works of culture. At thirteen Edelstein went with Ortiz and some other boys on the long trip to Buenos Aires, taking the boat that crossed the river Paraná before the tunnel was built, to San Martin Teatro to see a work of John Cage
and Merce Cunningham
. Both the experience and the memory of it are like an extraordinary dream where Edelstein remembers dancers with mirrors, intense conversation with Ortiz, and the cultural thrill of being in Buenos Aires for the first time. Edelstein says that the sensation of being in the house of Ortiz was like being in another river, with incredible labyrinthic connections to the whole world through time and space. It was as if Ortiz had underground tunnels across the world, including to Mao Zedong
and Chu En-Lai in Peking - who Ortiz visited in 1957 - and to authors like Jorge Luis Borges
, Macedonio Fernandez
, and Juan Jose Saer
who all visited Ortiz in Paraná.
but sadly Paz died days before he arrived (a story that Edelstein pays tribute to in his work "El Hecho") . Edelstein stayed in Buenos Aires and it was paradoxically only many years later in 1979, that he connected with Francisco Kröpfl, considered the best disciple of Paz. With him he finally completed his study of composition by being given the most important tool – the mastery and control of pitch. This completed Edelstein's appreciation of the universe of Arnold Schoenberg
and the Second Vienna School - a world which Paz had introduced to Spanish speaking countries.
His other teachers, before Kröpfl, were the prominent Argentine composers from a different aesthetic and school, Mariano Etkin
and José Maranzano. Later during the most turbulent years of the period of Argentina’s “Dirty War
” (1976 –78), Edelstein left the country and spent nearly three years traveling and studying. His travels included two years in France, staying near Paris and also going to the Abbaye de Solesmes, visiting libraries, museums and monasteries to understand more about medieval music
.
, Mauricio Kagel
, György Ligeti
, Krzysztof Penderecki
, Mario Davidovsky
, and John Chowning
. He has also helped to introduce many composers from around the world to Argentina, including Francisco Guerrero
from Spain (1951–1997) thanks a special lecture offered by Marcel Garbi -disciple of F. Guerrero- at the UNQ in 1998 in which recorded music and scores of the maestro were donated to the university. However it was with Luigi Nono
, who visited Buenos Aires in 1985, that there was a special and shared sense of understanding.
Edelstein also held a scholarship in Science and Technology from the University of Buenos Aires
(UBA) to work on several different projects related to music analysis and production with computers at the Centro de Investigación Musical(CIM-UBA), in the University of Buenos Aires. This centre was founded and directed by Edelstein, from 1985–1992, working with a team of professors; Pablo Di Liscia , Daniel Montes, Horacio Gutman, and Pablo Cetta. The CIM was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence
as applied to music analysis, and the projects they developed were the first to be formally registered in Argentina.
In 1991, he continued his efforts to develop Argentina’s infrastructure for disseminating ideas and theories of contemporary music in Argentina, by co-founding and editing a specialist music magazine,Lulú: Revista de Teorías y Técnicas Musicaleshttp://www.bazaramericano.com/musica/antologias_lulu/caratula_antologias_de_lulu1.htm with Carla Fonseca and Federico Monjeau. It was the first journal in Latin America to be dedicated to the contemporary arts and in the editorial committee were Argentina’s most important composers, musicologists, painters and writers.
In 1992 Edelstein was the youngest artist to win Argentina’s prestigious award of the Antorchas’ Scholarship for Outstanding Artists of the Intermediate Generation which he used to compose his opera El Telescopio.
and electro-acoustic music. The course has over 500 students and many of his alumni have continued as musicians and composers in avant-garde contemporary music, and also in jazz, popular and folk music, as well as holding positions in universities around the world. Having always chosen to be an Argentine composer living in Argentina, it was only in 2007 that he made the step of introducing his work outside Latin America, by making a research trip to give concerts and master-classes in the UK.
, polka
, vals criollo, cumbia
, chacarera
, milonga
and many others, mixing together, and added to by the “lloronas” hired to cry, was like a strange nightmare or a fantastic carnival that he always returns to in his compositions trying to revisit and rewrite.
The second experience was at the age of around fourteen, when he first heard Stockhausen. Edelstein says, “All my life I have been trying to cover this kind of distance.” In an interview he noted, “This kind of contradiction between the tragedy, the fiesta and the glory is the representation of the essential spirit of Argentina’s story, also epitomized by our national heroes like, Eva Peron
, Che Guevara
, Carlos Gardel
, and Diego Maradona
.”
What is different in Edelstein is his strong opposition to some nationalist academic folcloristas from Argentina, and also for some pseudo popular-folkloric musicians (who as he has pointed out only can understand these experiences in the European style – like tourists in their own land - and they make “folclore a la húngara" (Hungarian mode)). They look at Argentine popular folkloric music like someone looking at something through a window, or as Edelstein frequently says, “Like someone with a hooped-skirt in their brain.” In his experience of the “velorio del angelito” he heard and absorbed the whole experience in all it’s emotional intensity – “I am a popular musician who has studied” – something which now gives him the ability to create space and textures in his complex musical language whilst retaining a strong connection with the impulse and imagination of the popular. In this way he contributes to the increase of the stature and imagination of Argentine music, but more in the line of Heitor Villa-Lobos
(Brazil) where he says that “the folkloric is me” – just as Borges “enhanced” the story of the orilleros and gauchos.
Alongside these experiences the impact of a childhood spent close to a powerful river, in the province “between rivers,” can also be said to have had a profound influence on his music, especially as Ortiz guided him to begin his study of art by first studying nature, including giving him Maurice Maeterlinck
’s books about bees and spiders.
Other examples of Edelstein’s kind of essential synthesis (but in these cases fully scored) are Tangos Cientificos [Scientific Tangos], Viril Occidente II, Klange Urutaú and La Teoría Sagrada del Espacio Acústico – Libro I with the ENS, O Tiempo, La Condena and Alma’s Waltz. Alma’s Waltz, written for his daughter, was composed to sound simple but is in actuality incredibly difficult to play - the idea being that only the man who could succeed in playing it could ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The waltz has attained such popularity that many people do not know it’s author and believe that it is an anonymous traditional folk waltz - a fact that Edelstein greatly enjoys.
Edelstein is informed by the tradition of the Argentine intellectual avant-garde and as such many comparisons have been made to musicians, like Charles Ives
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
, Edgard Varèse
and John Cage
, but also to more popular or rock musicians like Hermeto Pascoal
, Frank Zappa
, and King Crimson
. Edelstein says, “Critics and specialists sometimes make comparisons in order to try to explain me to others who don't know my work. I really appreciate their intent because we always understand in our own dimension. I know that I am not so “important” or popular but I am sure that I am totally new.”
Comparisons to Cage are often made because of his multi-disciplinary universe and his cutting edge ideas, however his music in contrast to Cage’s can be described as Maximilist.
Edelstein is seen as emerging from three sources; the tradition of the contemporary music of Argentina, in the line of composers who he very much appreciates, such as Juan Carlos Paz, Francisco Kröpfl, Carmelo Saitta, Gerardo Gandini, Mariano Etkin
and many others; the popular musicians like Isaco Abitbol, Raúl Barboza, Remo Pignoni, Dino Saluzzi
and Cuchi Leguizamón, to name but a few that he listened to whilst growing up; and equally to the colleagues and the composers of his generation that contributed to making the group Otras Musicas, including Pablo Di Liscia, Gustavo Mirabile and Daniel Montes. However, now like Arnold Schönberg, Edelstein says, he learns most from his students, and the ENS (Ensamble Nacional del Sur) is an example of this.
Students have asked Edelstein that if Stockhausen receives his influences from andrómeda, what radiation does he receive; he always replies with a smile, “Well, I am andrómeda!”
The scope of his artistic visions, which include a new system of composition, design of instruments, theory, notation
and theatre, could be compared to a Wagnerian’s ideal, but Edelstein insists that he is more Argentine and Latin American – in other words more innocent, imaginative, ironic and hopefully little less ridiculous. He says enigmatically, “In the classic Woody Allen
joke when you hear Wagner you want to invade Poland, I hope when you hear my music you want to do the hippo-campo dance.” He goes on to say that it is hard for a European or for an Argentine formed in the classic European tradition of music to understand that life in the little province is spent between racing cars, poetry, music, horses, football and women.
Edelstein is currently, Senior professor, Head of Composition (Acoustic and Electro Acoustic), and Director of a research programme at the University of Quilmes, in 2006 his research programme into new musical theories and acoustic techniques, the Programa de investigación Teatro Acústico,http://www.teatroacustico.org won another landmark victory – it received funding from the Agencia de Promocion Científica y Tecnologica (a government agency that depends from the argentinian Ministerio de Ciencia, Tecnología e Innovación Productiva, see http://www.agencia.mincyt.gov.ar/) - the first time that a project in the arts has been awarded science funding and thus it was a major breakthrough for Edelstein’s research group. Working with a team of mathematicians, physicists, engineers, composers and musicians, Edelstein is developing his original ideas for new materials, techniques and approaches in spatial acoustics for theatre. His ideas of Acoustic Theatre include; a new system of control and notation of the acoustic space (The Acoustic Grid); entirely acoustic (non-electronic) techniques for a new system of composition; the creation a new kind of acoustic instrument (acousmonium); and the acoustic design of a new theatre. Edelstein's team are utilizing new materials based in the principal of sonic crystals to modulate the architecture of the acoustic space so as to add a new real-time parameter of control in a musical performance. Their researches will make the space itself an instrument for the contemporary composer. The register of this work made in collaboration with the physicist, Manuel Eguía, has been produced in the University of Quilmes, Argentina, and the first international publication is in Germany in 2007.
. The Clarín reviewed it as “Original, innovative – some pieces are like from the anthology of opera.” It was the first musical work to speak about the presidency of Carlos Menem
. In the middle of scenes depicting the incredible decadence that Argentina fell into, Edelstein has a murga – a street-musical group common in Uruguay
and Argentina often present at political protests – erupt into the theatre, cutting across conventional lines of opera as a “high” art. The final aria of the work is Edelstein’s setting of "El Rio," a poem by Juan L. Ortiz, that he uses to make a contrast with the scenes of decadence and decay.
"http://musica.unq.edu.ar/cartelera/LA%20NACION%20LINE.htm that is perhaps the most noteworthy for its scale and vision. The first opera to speak about a figure who Edelstein calls “Brazil’s only real national hero”, "Tiradentes" was an opera to take place over three days, about the man who led a revolt la conspiración de Minas Gerais. Way before the French Revolution
, it was the first act of self-determination in Brazil, which many years later contributed to Brazil’s independence, which happened much later than the rest of Latin America.
As a joint project between the universities of Quilmes (Argentina) and Brasilia
(Brazil) it was to be staged throughout Brasilia’s model city. The complex project involved a team of more than two hundred actors, plastics artists, technicians and musicians from both countries, and received the backing of UNESCO
and funding from prominent foundations. However, the project was ultimately postponed by a combination of factors, including the controversy that the history of Tiradentes provoked (such as Tiradentes’ known links to the freemasons), political and diplomatic problems between Argentina and Brazil, and political issues in Brazil. Though it is a project that was fully conceived, composed and scored by Edelstein; finally only part of it was performed. Edelstein hopes to one day complete the project.
A new work for piano that will be performed in 2008 with an accompanying film.
Edelstein uses his aria, "El Rio", again in his work Rivers and Mirrors: Part Ihttp://www.riversandmirrors.com with singer Deborah Claire Procter (Wales) who also made the film to accompany the performance with the dancer Sandra Grinberg of the Trisha Brown
Dance Company. This work, in which Edelstein also plays the piano, was premiered in the UK in 2007 to an enthusiastic response from audiences and critics.
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
. Known for creativity and inventiveness, frequently he is described as leading Latin America
Latin America
Latin America is a region of the Americas where Romance languages – particularly Spanish and Portuguese, and variably French – are primarily spoken. Latin America has an area of approximately 21,069,500 km² , almost 3.9% of the Earth's surface or 14.1% of its land surface area...
’s avant-garde
Avant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
. He is also a pianist, conductor, and researcher.
La Paz, Paraná & Entre Rios
La Paz, Entre Ríos
La Paz is a city in the province of Entre Ríos in the Argentine Mesopotamia. It has about 25,000 inhabitants as per the , and is the head town of the department of the same name....
, in the province of Entre Ríos
Entre Ríos Province
Entre Ríos is a northeastern province of Argentina, located in the Mesopotamia region. It borders the provinces of Buenos Aires , Corrientes and Santa Fe , and Uruguay in the east....
. He spent his childhood in Paraná
Paraná, Entre Ríos
Paraná is the capital city of the Argentine province of Entre Ríos, located on the eastern shore of the Paraná River, opposite the city of Santa Fe, capital of the neighbouring Santa Fe Province...
, Entre Rios’ capital, a city known for its river Paraná, South America’s second longest river, and its name drawn from the Tupi
Tupian languages
The Tupi or Tupian language family comprises some 70 languages spoken in South America, of which the best known are Tupi proper and Guarani.-History, members and classification:...
language meaning "like the sea" due to it’s width. Entre Rios is literally the province “between rivers” and for a short time it was an independent republic – a spirit it has maintained to this day and that has had an impact on Edelstein.
Edelstein is from a family of musicians but his father, a road engineer, inspired him also with a love of machines and technology. He triggered Edelstein's desire to compose by a birthday present at the age of five of a Geloso
Geloso
Geloso, founded in 1931 by John Geloso, was an Italian manufacturer of radios, televisions, amplifiers, amateur receivers, audio equipment and component electronics, that had headquarters in Milan, Viale Brenta 29....
portable tape recorder. It was his first instrument and tool for composition before the piano.
His early interest in creating music was not easy for many of his schoolteachers to understand. To them all the important composers were dead, therefore it was up to Edelstein to prove that this was not true. Discovering information about living composers while living in a small province was not straightforward and required Edelstein’s insatiable curiosity and persistent questioning. He was fortunate to have the imagination and open-mindedness of many of his family and teachers who brought some of the answers he needed. One piano teacher, Eva Taubas, was significant for allowing him at seven to “improvise Beethoven” in his lessons, in a sense showing him it was possible, as Edelstein puts it, “to destroy Beethoven” and construct something new.
Piano – Bed or Ship?
At twelve, his aunt, the well-known Argentine pianist Sarah Zimerman, played him a Vladimir HorowitzVladimir Horowitz
Vladimir Samoylovich Horowitz was a Russian-American classical virtuoso pianist and minor composer. His technique and use of tone color and the excitement of his playing were legendary. He is widely considered one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century.-Life and early...
recording, hoping to encourage him to be a classic concert pianist but in fact she gave Edelstein the big argument he needed to define his future. He remembers saying, “He has said all that you can say in this language so let me try something different.”
He had a special relationship with the piano and his desire was to be another kind of player, seeing that the piano could either be a bed or a ship.
Speaking with God
One music theory teacher from Paraná would take Edelstein with him to Santa FeSanta Fe, Argentina
Santa Fe is the capital city of province of Santa Fe, Argentina. It sits in northeastern Argentina, near the junction of the Paraná and Salado rivers. It lies opposite the city of Paraná, to which it is linked by the Hernandarias Subfluvial Tunnel. The city is also connected by canal with the...
Conservatoire, at the age of eleven, to try to begin his study of harmony and counterpoint as an unofficial student. The teacher told his mother, “Oscar is un-usually gifted but he really needs to be better at following the rules.” His mother looked at Oscar in agreement, however when the teacher continued with advice about how the young Edelstein would also need to follow the rules more strictly in order to make his own musical experience, his mother looked at the teacher and said, “You are the professor, but he is the music.” This kind of environment gave Edelstein the conviction that he could be the creative source, something he still respects to this day whenever he teaches.
Edelstein was also encouraged by a provocative “anarchist” uncle who told him, “You can believe in God if you want, but look at the priests and the rabbis, look at their faces and tell me, if God existed and was intelligent would he really need to chose this face to speak to you?” Edelstein took the underlying message of all these experiences to mean that he could be the source of the music, and therefore in his searches to become a composer he needed to link directly to composers, authors and artists. With this in mind he began his lifetime search for originality that fuelled years of intense private study.
El Rio, Juan L. Ortiz & Interference
Sitting by the river listening to a MotorolaMotorola
Motorola, Inc. was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois, which was eventually divided into two independent public companies, Motorola Mobility and Motorola Solutions on January 4, 2011, after losing $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009...
Transoceanic Radio, as a young boy, he continued to seek out “living composers.” There was Argentina’s national radio station broadcasting concerts from Teatro Colón far away in Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, stations from the BBC World Service
BBC World Service
The BBC World Service is the world's largest international broadcaster, broadcasting in 27 languages to many parts of the world via analogue and digital shortwave, internet streaming and podcasting, satellite, FM and MW relays...
, from Japan, and all over the world; and when asked by students, at a master class in London and in Birmingham in 2007, how a person from such a small town could become interested in contemporary music, he told a story that he has often told, describing how sitting listening to the radio in a car at night, with the rain, and a storm, and the sound of the river, he never quite knew what was the music and what was the interference
Interference (communication)
In communications and electronics, especially in telecommunications, interference is anything which alters, modifies, or disrupts a signal as it travels along a channel between a source and a receiver. The term typically refers to the addition of unwanted signals to a useful signal...
.
Still asking difficult questions that were difficult to answer, Edelstein discovered Juan Laurentino Ortiz, Argentina’s poet most highly respected by other writers, artists and musicians who spent the last years of his life in Paraná. Juan L. Ortiz was to have a profound impact on Edelstein, and through many hours sat by the river talking, became a mentor and guide, for it was only he that had the connection to a world of literature, music and culture that could begin to answer Edelstein’s intense curiosity. Many intellectuals, young people and important cultures figures came to visit Ortiz, so when he discovered news of Stockhausen he shared it with Edelstein, as well as introducing him to other great works of culture. At thirteen Edelstein went with Ortiz and some other boys on the long trip to Buenos Aires, taking the boat that crossed the river Paraná before the tunnel was built, to San Martin Teatro to see a work of John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
and Merce Cunningham
Merce Cunningham
Mercier "Merce" Philip Cunningham was an American dancer and choreographer who was at the forefront of the American avant-garde for more than 50 years. Throughout much of his life, Cunningham was considered one of the greatest creative forces in American dance...
. Both the experience and the memory of it are like an extraordinary dream where Edelstein remembers dancers with mirrors, intense conversation with Ortiz, and the cultural thrill of being in Buenos Aires for the first time. Edelstein says that the sensation of being in the house of Ortiz was like being in another river, with incredible labyrinthic connections to the whole world through time and space. It was as if Ortiz had underground tunnels across the world, including to Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
and Chu En-Lai in Peking - who Ortiz visited in 1957 - and to authors like Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Luis Borges
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...
, Macedonio Fernandez
Macedonio Fernandez
Macedonio Fernández was an Argentine writer, humorist, and philosopher. His writings included novels, stories, poetry, journalism, and works not easily classified. He was a mentor to Jorge Luis Borges and other avant-garde Argentine writers. Seventeen years of his correspondence with Borges was...
, and Juan Jose Saer
Juan José Saer
Juan José Saer was one of the most important Argentine novelists of the last fifty years.Born to Syrian immigrants in Serodino, a small town in the Santa Fe Province, he studied law and philosophy at the National University of the Littoral, where he taught History of Cinematography. Thanks to a...
who all visited Ortiz in Paraná.
Buenos Aires: The Paradox
In 1972 it was with Ortiz’ influence that Edelstein made the step of moving to the capital to study. He arrived in Buenos Aires with a recommendation from Ortiz to study with Juan Carlos PazJuan Carlos Paz
Juan Carlos Paz was an Argentine composer and music theorist.Paz was born in Buenos Aires, where he studied piano with Roberto Nery and composition with Constantino Gaito and Fornarini...
but sadly Paz died days before he arrived (a story that Edelstein pays tribute to in his work "El Hecho") . Edelstein stayed in Buenos Aires and it was paradoxically only many years later in 1979, that he connected with Francisco Kröpfl, considered the best disciple of Paz. With him he finally completed his study of composition by being given the most important tool – the mastery and control of pitch. This completed Edelstein's appreciation of the universe of Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg
Arnold Schoenberg was an Austrian composer, associated with the expressionist movement in German poetry and art, and leader of the Second Viennese School...
and the Second Vienna School - a world which Paz had introduced to Spanish speaking countries.
His other teachers, before Kröpfl, were the prominent Argentine composers from a different aesthetic and school, Mariano Etkin
Mariano Etkin
Mariano Etkin is a Argentinian composer.In 1968-1969, he studied at the Utrecht University with Gottfried Michael Koenig; in 1969-1970, he studied at Juilliard School with Luciano Berio under an Organization of American States fellowship.He was Main Professor of Composition and Director of a...
and José Maranzano. Later during the most turbulent years of the period of Argentina’s “Dirty War
Dirty War
The Dirty War was a period of state-sponsored violence in Argentina from 1976 until 1983. Victims of the violence included several thousand left-wing activists, including trade unionists, students, journalists, Marxists, Peronist guerrillas and alleged sympathizers, either proved or suspected...
” (1976 –78), Edelstein left the country and spent nearly three years traveling and studying. His travels included two years in France, staying near Paris and also going to the Abbaye de Solesmes, visiting libraries, museums and monasteries to understand more about medieval music
Medieval music
Medieval music is Western music written during the Middle Ages. This era begins with the fall of the Roman Empire and ends sometime in the early fifteenth century...
.
Creating Centres, Reviews and Ensembles
Edelstein’s career as a composer has been characterised by breaking new ground. He directs many chamber groups of improvisation in music, frequently exploring the interplay between music and theatre, and has attained several national and international awards for his chamber and electronic productions. He is known for his technical mastery of composition, his original methods of composition and direction of improvisation, and his librettos. As a young leading Argentine composer, he was left with a strong impression from the many of the principal composers that he met, such as Pierre BoulezPierre Boulez
Pierre Boulez is a French composer of contemporary classical music, a pianist, and a conductor.-Early years:Boulez was born in Montbrison, Loire, France. As a child he began piano lessons and demonstrated aptitude in both music and mathematics...
, Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel
Mauricio Kagel was a German-Argentine composer. He was notable for his interest in developing the theatrical side of musical performance .-Biography:...
, György Ligeti
György Ligeti
György Sándor Ligeti was a composer of contemporary classical music. Born in a Hungarian Jewish family in Transylvania, Romania, he briefly lived in Hungary before becoming an Austrian citizen.-Early life:...
, Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki
Krzysztof Penderecki , born November 23, 1933 in Dębica) is a Polish composer and conductor. His 1960 avant-garde Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima for string orchestra brought him to international attention, and this success was followed by acclaim for his choral St. Luke Passion. Both these...
, Mario Davidovsky
Mario Davidovsky
Mario Davidovsky is an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the US, where he lives today...
, and John Chowning
John Chowning
John M. Chowning is an American composer, musician, inventor, and professor best known for his work at Stanford University and his invention of FM synthesis while there.-Contribution:...
. He has also helped to introduce many composers from around the world to Argentina, including Francisco Guerrero
Francisco Guerrero Marín
Francisco Guerrero Marín was a Spanish composer. He was born in Linares and died in Madrid.During his life-time, he completed several compositions, among which there are five major works for orchestra: Antar Atman , Ariadna , Sahara , Oleada and Coma Berenices...
from Spain (1951–1997) thanks a special lecture offered by Marcel Garbi -disciple of F. Guerrero- at the UNQ in 1998 in which recorded music and scores of the maestro were donated to the university. However it was with Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono
Luigi Nono was an Italian avant-garde composer of classical music and remains one of the most prominent composers of the 20th century.- Early years :Born in Venice, he was a member of a wealthy artistic family, and his grandfather was a notable painter...
, who visited Buenos Aires in 1985, that there was a special and shared sense of understanding.
Centro de Investigación Musical
Between 1974 and 1977, Edelstein was a scholarship holder at the Centro de Investigaciones en Ciencia, Material, Arte y Tecnología (C.I.C.M.A.T – the former Instituto Di Tella), and between 1985 and 1986 he was one of the three young musicians selected to work at the Laboratorio de Investigación y Producción Musical (L.I.P.M.) It was here that he composed one of the works for which he is most known, Viril Occidente I. Another project of Edelstein's in L.I.P.M. was Estudio y Aplicación de los medios digitales en la Composición Musical (1989–1991), supported by a scholarship of the Fundación Antorchas, and used by Edelstein to compose Viril Occidente II (the overture to El Telescopio).Edelstein also held a scholarship in Science and Technology from the University of Buenos Aires
University of Buenos Aires
The University of Buenos Aires is the largest university in Argentina and the largest university by enrollment in Latin America. Founded on August 12, 1821 in the city of Buenos Aires, it consists of 13 faculties, 6 hospitals, 10 museums and is linked to 4 high schools: Colegio Nacional de Buenos...
(UBA) to work on several different projects related to music analysis and production with computers at the Centro de Investigación Musical(CIM-UBA), in the University of Buenos Aires. This centre was founded and directed by Edelstein, from 1985–1992, working with a team of professors; Pablo Di Liscia , Daniel Montes, Horacio Gutman, and Pablo Cetta. The CIM was a pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
as applied to music analysis, and the projects they developed were the first to be formally registered in Argentina.
Nueva Música, Otras Música, Antorchas' & Lulú
Edelstein was also a member of Nueva Música, the group of composers and teachers founded by Paz and continued by Kröpfl, until four years later in 1984, when Edelstein decided to create a new group with eleven composers of his generation, all from different schools and aesthetics, called Otras Músicas. As an association of composers, Otras Músicas was dedicated to the diffusion of contemporary music in the continent.In 1991, he continued his efforts to develop Argentina’s infrastructure for disseminating ideas and theories of contemporary music in Argentina, by co-founding and editing a specialist music magazine,Lulú: Revista de Teorías y Técnicas Musicaleshttp://www.bazaramericano.com/musica/antologias_lulu/caratula_antologias_de_lulu1.htm with Carla Fonseca and Federico Monjeau. It was the first journal in Latin America to be dedicated to the contemporary arts and in the editorial committee were Argentina’s most important composers, musicologists, painters and writers.
In 1992 Edelstein was the youngest artist to win Argentina’s prestigious award of the Antorchas’ Scholarship for Outstanding Artists of the Intermediate Generation which he used to compose his opera El Telescopio.
Music for Theatre
Throughout his career he has had close links with theatre, and is famous for his collaborations with the renowned Argentine theatre director, Roberto Villanueva, working with him on over twenty productions in the major theatres of Buenos Aires. Several directors in Brazil like Ge Orthof, Hugo Rodas, Fernando Villar, Silvia Davini and many others, have both staged and re-staged works of acoustic theatre by Edelstein. Edelstein has also made many works that have been used in dance, and is noted for his collaborations with the choreographer and director, Silvia Pritz.Teaching
Edelstein is senior professor and co-founder of the degree in Music Composition in Acoustic and Electro Acoustics, at the University of Quilmes (outside Buenos Aires, see Quilmes). It is a course prominent both in Argentina and throughout the continent. As well as teaching composition for acousticAcoustic music
Acoustic music comprises music that solely or primarily uses instruments which produce sound through entirely acoustic means, as opposed to electric or electronic means...
and electro-acoustic music. The course has over 500 students and many of his alumni have continued as musicians and composers in avant-garde contemporary music, and also in jazz, popular and folk music, as well as holding positions in universities around the world. Having always chosen to be an Argentine composer living in Argentina, it was only in 2007 that he made the step of introducing his work outside Latin America, by making a research trip to give concerts and master-classes in the UK.
Velorio del Angelito
Edelstein quotes two key metaphysical musical experiences that influence his style the most; the first was at the age of six at the funeral of a child – called by the people of the province, a “velorio del angelito” (funeral of a little angel) because, they say, when a child dies that God must have made a mistake – giving an angel to the earth which he needs to take back. Listening to this ritual at the border between the provinces of Entre Rios and Corrientes, with the different kinds of groups all playing at the same time, and the Argentine rhythms of chamaméChamamé
Chamamé is a folk music genre from the Argentine Northeast, Mesopotamia and in the south of Brazil. Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Mato Grosso do Sul....
, polka
Polka
The polka is a Central European dance and also a genre of dance music familiar throughout Europe and the Americas. It originated in the middle of the 19th century in Bohemia...
, vals criollo, cumbia
Cumbia
Cumbia is a music genre popular across Latin America. The cumbia originated in the Caribbean coast of Colombia, where it is associated with an eponymous dance and has since spread as far as Mexico and Argentina...
, chacarera
Chacarera
The Chacarera is a dance of Argentine origin. It is a genre of folk music that, for many Argentines, serves as a rural counterpart to the cosmopolitan imagery of the Tango...
, milonga
Milonga
Milonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...
and many others, mixing together, and added to by the “lloronas” hired to cry, was like a strange nightmare or a fantastic carnival that he always returns to in his compositions trying to revisit and rewrite.
The second experience was at the age of around fourteen, when he first heard Stockhausen. Edelstein says, “All my life I have been trying to cover this kind of distance.” In an interview he noted, “This kind of contradiction between the tragedy, the fiesta and the glory is the representation of the essential spirit of Argentina’s story, also epitomized by our national heroes like, Eva Peron
Eva Perón
María Eva Duarte de Perón was the second wife of President Juan Perón and served as the First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She is often referred to as simply Eva Perón, or by the affectionate Spanish language diminutive Evita.She was born in the village of Los Toldos in...
, Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
, Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel was a singer, songwriter and actor, and is perhaps the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was born in Toulouse, France, although he never acknowledged his birthplace publicly, and there are still claims of his birth in Uruguay. He lived in Argentina from the age of two...
, and Diego Maradona
Diego Maradona
Diego Armando Maradona is a retired Argentine football player and widely regarded as one of the greatest football players of all time. Over the course of his professional club career Maradona played for Argentinos Juniors, Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli, Sevilla and Newell's Old Boys, setting...
.”
What is different in Edelstein is his strong opposition to some nationalist academic folcloristas from Argentina, and also for some pseudo popular-folkloric musicians (who as he has pointed out only can understand these experiences in the European style – like tourists in their own land - and they make “folclore a la húngara" (Hungarian mode)). They look at Argentine popular folkloric music like someone looking at something through a window, or as Edelstein frequently says, “Like someone with a hooped-skirt in their brain.” In his experience of the “velorio del angelito” he heard and absorbed the whole experience in all it’s emotional intensity – “I am a popular musician who has studied” – something which now gives him the ability to create space and textures in his complex musical language whilst retaining a strong connection with the impulse and imagination of the popular. In this way he contributes to the increase of the stature and imagination of Argentine music, but more in the line of Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos
Heitor Villa-Lobos was a Brazilian composer, described as "the single most significant creative figure in 20th-century Brazilian art music". Villa-Lobos has become the best-known and most significant Latin American composer to date. He wrote numerous orchestral, chamber, instrumental and vocal works...
(Brazil) where he says that “the folkloric is me” – just as Borges “enhanced” the story of the orilleros and gauchos.
Alongside these experiences the impact of a childhood spent close to a powerful river, in the province “between rivers,” can also be said to have had a profound influence on his music, especially as Ortiz guided him to begin his study of art by first studying nature, including giving him Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Maeterlinck
Maurice Polydore Marie Bernard Maeterlinck, also called Comte Maeterlinck from 1932, was a Belgian playwright, poet, and essayist who wrote in French. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1911. The main themes in his work are death and the meaning of life...
’s books about bees and spiders.
"Composition in the Act"
His album in 2006 Dos Improntus (sic)http://cdbaby.com/cd/edelsteinbarboza with renowned accordionist, Raúl Barboza, was a meeting of different musical worlds. Edelstein’s intention was that through playing together in a process of composition in the moment (rather than formally writing) he would create a new kind of synthesis of the Argentine experience and history of music. The disc has caused much discussion and is making an impact on musical culture in Argentina and Latin America, including becoming sited in various research works.Other examples of Edelstein’s kind of essential synthesis (but in these cases fully scored) are Tangos Cientificos [Scientific Tangos], Viril Occidente II, Klange Urutaú and La Teoría Sagrada del Espacio Acústico – Libro I with the ENS, O Tiempo, La Condena and Alma’s Waltz. Alma’s Waltz, written for his daughter, was composed to sound simple but is in actuality incredibly difficult to play - the idea being that only the man who could succeed in playing it could ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage. The waltz has attained such popularity that many people do not know it’s author and believe that it is an anonymous traditional folk waltz - a fact that Edelstein greatly enjoys.
Argentina & Andrómeda
Charles Ives
Charles Edward Ives was an American modernist composer. He is one of the first American composers of international renown, though Ives' music was largely ignored during his life, and many of his works went unperformed for many years. Over time, Ives came to be regarded as an "American Original"...
, Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
, Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
and John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, but also to more popular or rock musicians like Hermeto Pascoal
Hermeto Pascoal
Hermeto Pascoal is a Brazilian composer and multi-instrumentalist. He was born in Lagoa da Canoa, Alagoas, Brazil. Pascoal is a greatly beloved musical figure in the history of Brazilian music, known for his abilities at orchestration and improvisation, as well as being a record producer and...
, Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
, and King Crimson
King Crimson
King Crimson are a rock band founded in London, England in 1969. Often categorised as a foundational progressive rock group, the band have incorporated diverse influences and instrumentation during their history...
. Edelstein says, “Critics and specialists sometimes make comparisons in order to try to explain me to others who don't know my work. I really appreciate their intent because we always understand in our own dimension. I know that I am not so “important” or popular but I am sure that I am totally new.”
Comparisons to Cage are often made because of his multi-disciplinary universe and his cutting edge ideas, however his music in contrast to Cage’s can be described as Maximilist.
Edelstein is seen as emerging from three sources; the tradition of the contemporary music of Argentina, in the line of composers who he very much appreciates, such as Juan Carlos Paz, Francisco Kröpfl, Carmelo Saitta, Gerardo Gandini, Mariano Etkin
Mariano Etkin
Mariano Etkin is a Argentinian composer.In 1968-1969, he studied at the Utrecht University with Gottfried Michael Koenig; in 1969-1970, he studied at Juilliard School with Luciano Berio under an Organization of American States fellowship.He was Main Professor of Composition and Director of a...
and many others; the popular musicians like Isaco Abitbol, Raúl Barboza, Remo Pignoni, Dino Saluzzi
Dino Saluzzi
Timoteo "Dino" Saluzzi is an Argentine musician.The son of popular carpero composer and instrumentalist Cayetano Saluzzi, Dino played the bandoneón since his childhood...
and Cuchi Leguizamón, to name but a few that he listened to whilst growing up; and equally to the colleagues and the composers of his generation that contributed to making the group Otras Musicas, including Pablo Di Liscia, Gustavo Mirabile and Daniel Montes. However, now like Arnold Schönberg, Edelstein says, he learns most from his students, and the ENS (Ensamble Nacional del Sur) is an example of this.
Students have asked Edelstein that if Stockhausen receives his influences from andrómeda, what radiation does he receive; he always replies with a smile, “Well, I am andrómeda!”
The scope of his artistic visions, which include a new system of composition, design of instruments, theory, notation
Musical notation
Music notation or musical notation is any system that represents aurally perceived music, through the use of written symbols.-History:...
and theatre, could be compared to a Wagnerian’s ideal, but Edelstein insists that he is more Argentine and Latin American – in other words more innocent, imaginative, ironic and hopefully little less ridiculous. He says enigmatically, “In the classic Woody Allen
Woody Allen
Woody Allen is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author, and playwright. Allen's films draw heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema...
joke when you hear Wagner you want to invade Poland, I hope when you hear my music you want to do the hippo-campo dance.” He goes on to say that it is hard for a European or for an Argentine formed in the classic European tradition of music to understand that life in the little province is spent between racing cars, poetry, music, horses, football and women.
New Techniques: Methods in Notation, Composition & Improvisation - Conducting as an element of composition
Research - Teatro Acústico
ENS- Ensamble Nacional del Sur
His electro acoustic group, the ENS- Ensamble Nacional del Surhttp://musica.unq.edu.ar/investiga/myd/Z7/ens/index.htm were hugely popular, critically acclaimed as revolutionary, achieving a cult following in both Brazil and Argentina, and seen by Edelstein as a new instrument of composition. Created by Edelstein in 1997, as a working group of research, creation and independent music production, it was conceived as a musical lab composed of musicians, composers, artists and technicians. Edelstein worked with systems of traditional notation combined with new and 3-dimensional models that he created. He conducted the group with his specially developed system of hand signals so that he could not only designate time and intensity but also timbrical and spatial options. The members of the ENS were composers as well as musicians and thus could effectively respond to these directions. They played in a number of Edelstein’s acoustic theatre works, including the first part of the trilogy La Teoría Sagrada del Espacio Acoustico – Libro I (2000–2001); Klange, Klange, Urutau (1997) - described by Clarín’s music critic Federico Monjeau as “an hour of music without interruptions, and without a moment of weakness"; and El Hecho (1998) which Monjeau called “a profound theatrical idea and fascinating music.” Critic Martín Liut commented, “Oscar Edelstein opens new horizons for modern music and opera in Argentina.” In 1999 Edelstein presented El Tiempo, La Condena in Brazil and Argentina, critics called the work a “shock of music and the avantgarde in the heart of Brazil.” Their performances were considered as “the most important musical events of the last decade in Argentina.”La Teoría Sagrada del Espacio Acoustico – Libro I
In 2004, La Teoría Sagrada del Espacio Acoustico – Libro Ihttp://cdbaby.com/cd/oscaredelstein was recorded in Super Audio by the ENS. It was critically acclaimed and created a considerable excitement as the first disc in Latin America to be recorded in Super Audio (5.1) as and the first work in the world to have been specifically composed for this system. Edelstein both conducted the ENS and played the piano along side, Mariano Cura (Keyboards / Technical Head), Nicolás Varchausky (Electric Guitar), Diego Romero Mascaró (Drums & Percussion), Mario Castelli (Piano), Jerónimo Carmona (Bass & Double Bass) and Richard Arce (Electric Guitar).El Hecho [The Fact]
El Hecho [The Fact]http://musica.unq.edu.ar/cartelera/El_Hecho/index.htm (1998), due to its popularity and controversy, was performed over fifty times, which is unusual for a new opera. The work was made in memory of Juan Carlos Paz, inspired by Paz’ graphic design, Seis eventos [Six Events] which was Paz’ last work but which was never musically realised it was the first work to pay homage to the famous Argentine composer and in it Edelstein also makes reference to his thwarted attempt to study with Paz. Performed with the “revolutionary” ENS and three actor-singers, in the story a caricature of a theoretician desperately tries to explain Paz’s mysterious designs, whilst in contrast, a female character, who represents a voice that travels through time and space, makes references that could be taken as reminisces about the life of Paz. The character of Paz enters and listens to the two monologues, at first saying nothing but then finally shooting the theoretician, at which point “the voice” dies in Paz’s arms and he recovers his voice, takes the gun and acts as if to shoot the other musicians (the ENS), including Edelstein as conductor, but finally puts the gun on Edelstein’s piano. This tribute to the teacher he never had stirred debate about the position and relationship between the composer and the academy of music. The work was described as “brilliant” and “the most important opera in the story of Argentina.”Opera
Many of Edelstein’s works are grounded in the field of “the extended theatre of music”, where he stresses a focus on voice, speech production and the interplay with technology. Often he works with non-classically trained singers and choirs, training them to develop a specific sound colour. He has a “guest choir” of voices that will often appear in his compositions. He prefers to describe his works as acoustic theatre, feeling that the word opera both does not fit many of his works that use electro acoustics and not the traditional orchestra. In 2006, C.E.T.C., the experimental wing of Buenos Aires’ opera house, Teatro Colón, commissioned and produced his opera Eterna Flotación-Los monstruito.http://www.losmonstruito.com As often is the case in his works, the libretto was written by Edelstein, this time adapting poems from Lo Dado by Rodolfo Enrique FogwillRodolfo Enrique Fogwill
Rodolfo Enrique Fogwill , who normally went only by his surname, Fogwill, was an Argentine sociologist, short story writer, and novelist. He was a distant relative of the novelist Charles Langbridge Morgan...
. The Clarín reviewed it as “Original, innovative – some pieces are like from the anthology of opera.” It was the first musical work to speak about the presidency of Carlos Menem
Carlos Menem
Carlos Saúl Menem is an Argentine politician who was President of Argentina from 1989 to 1999. He is currently an Argentine National Senator for La Rioja Province.-Early life:...
. In the middle of scenes depicting the incredible decadence that Argentina fell into, Edelstein has a murga – a street-musical group common in Uruguay
Uruguay
Uruguay ,officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay,sometimes the Eastern Republic of Uruguay; ) is a country in the southeastern part of South America. It is home to some 3.5 million people, of whom 1.8 million live in the capital Montevideo and its metropolitan area...
and Argentina often present at political protests – erupt into the theatre, cutting across conventional lines of opera as a “high” art. The final aria of the work is Edelstein’s setting of "El Rio," a poem by Juan L. Ortiz, that he uses to make a contrast with the scenes of decadence and decay.
Tiradentes (2003) – "The Dream of Heroes"
Having written over 14 works of what Edelstein prefers to call Acoustic Theatre - it is "TiradentesTiradentes
Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes , was a leading member of the Brazilian revolutionary movement known as the Inconfidência Mineira whose aim was full independence from the Portuguese colonial power and to create a Brazilian republic. When the plan was discovered, Tiradentes was...
"http://musica.unq.edu.ar/cartelera/LA%20NACION%20LINE.htm that is perhaps the most noteworthy for its scale and vision. The first opera to speak about a figure who Edelstein calls “Brazil’s only real national hero”, "Tiradentes" was an opera to take place over three days, about the man who led a revolt la conspiración de Minas Gerais. Way before the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
, it was the first act of self-determination in Brazil, which many years later contributed to Brazil’s independence, which happened much later than the rest of Latin America.
As a joint project between the universities of Quilmes (Argentina) and Brasilia
Brasília
Brasília is the capital city of Brazil. The name is commonly spelled Brasilia in English. The city and its District are located in the Central-West region of the country, along a plateau known as Planalto Central. It has a population of about 2,557,000 as of the 2008 IBGE estimate, making it the...
(Brazil) it was to be staged throughout Brasilia’s model city. The complex project involved a team of more than two hundred actors, plastics artists, technicians and musicians from both countries, and received the backing of UNESCO
UNESCO
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations...
and funding from prominent foundations. However, the project was ultimately postponed by a combination of factors, including the controversy that the history of Tiradentes provoked (such as Tiradentes’ known links to the freemasons), political and diplomatic problems between Argentina and Brazil, and political issues in Brazil. Though it is a project that was fully conceived, composed and scored by Edelstein; finally only part of it was performed. Edelstein hopes to one day complete the project.
Piano Impossible
As well as a prolific composer, Edelstein has a “formidable” piano technique that was most recently commented on in his work, Rivers and Mirrors: Part I during his UK tour in 2007. He makes the distinction that he is a composer that plays the piano, not a pianist. Thus he always looks for new timbres and originality in both his playing and his compositions.- ION (2007)
A new work for piano that will be performed in 2008 with an accompanying film.
- Rivers and Mirrors: Part I (2007)
Edelstein uses his aria, "El Rio", again in his work Rivers and Mirrors: Part Ihttp://www.riversandmirrors.com with singer Deborah Claire Procter (Wales) who also made the film to accompany the performance with the dancer Sandra Grinberg of the Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown
Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...
Dance Company. This work, in which Edelstein also plays the piano, was premiered in the UK in 2007 to an enthusiastic response from audiences and critics.