Wilfrido Terrazas - Improvisation Concert

Presented by Mills College Music Department and the Center for Contemporary Music

Flutist Wilfrido Terrazas performs a concert of improvised solos, and duos with bassist Lisa Mezzacappa.

Wilfrido Terrazas, flute

Wilfrido Terrazas (Camargo, 1974) is a Mexican flutist active since the early 1990s, whose career spans performance, commissioning, collaboration, improvisation, composition and pedagogy. His recent work has been focused on finding points of convergence between notated and improvised music, and in exploring innovative approaches to collaboration and collective creation. He is a founding member and Herald of the Mexico City-based improvisation collective Generación Espontánea since 2006. As an interpreter, Wilfrido has performed over 350 world premieres, and has been a member of Liminar ensemble since 2012. As a composer, his main interest is the exploration of dialogues between composition, improvisation and performance. As such, he has written over 50 works for diverse instrumental forces. Other current projects include Filera, Escudo (Torre), and the Wilfrido Terrazas Sea Quintet. Since 2014, Wilfrido has been co-curator of La Semana Internacional de Improvisación, a week-long festival dedicated to improvised music in Ensenada.

Wilfrido has been a committed educator since his adolescence. In the summer of 2017, he was appointed Assistant Professor in Contemporary Music Performance (Flute) at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to his appointment at UCSD, he taught at the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia and at the Escuela Superior de Música in Mexico City. He is also in demand as a coach and workshop leader throughout Mexico.

Wilfrido has presented his work in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and in over 40 cities in Mexico.  He has obtained support from the National Fund for the Culture and the Arts (FONCA) and several other Mexican institutions, has been an artist in residence at Omi International Arts Center (Ghent, NY), Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna, FL) and Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture (Kefalonia, Greece); and participated in the recording of more than 30 albums, four of them as a soloist or leader: Open Cages (Umor, 2007), Bóreas (Shival/CONARTE 2010), Bug/ge/d (Mandorla, 2010) and Pirate Songs (Ápice, 2018). Among his long time collaborators are composers Ignacio Baca Lobera, Thanos Chrysakis, Édgar Guzmán, Nickos Harizanos, Iván Naranjo and Mauricio Rodríguez; cellist Natalia Pérez Turner, vocalist and intermedia artist Carmina Escobar, multimedia artist Yair López, and poets Nuria Manzur and Ronnie Yates. Recent collaborations include recording with Roscoe Mitchell (Discussions, Wide Hive, 2017) and playing with Andrew Drury, Vinny Golia, Stephanie Griffin, Ig Henneman, Katt Hernandez, Anne La Berge, Wade Matthews, Mary Oliver and Stephanie Richards.

Wilfrido Terrazas studied music initially in Baja California and California. He later graduated from the Conservatorio de las Rosas. Among his most influential teachers are Damian Bursill-Hall, Tom Corona, John Fonville, Roscoe Mitchell, Guillermo Portillo, Germán Romero and Ernesto Rosas. Wilfrido grew up in Ensenada, and, after been based in Mexico City for over 14 years, he has recently relocated to San Diego, California.

https://wilfridoterrazas.weebly.com/

Lisa Mezzacappa, bass

Lisa Mezzacappa has been an active collaborator in the San Francisco Bay Area music community for more than 15 years. Her activities as a composer, bassist and ensemble leader encompass ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance and visual art. Mezzacappa has released her music on the New World, Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo and NotTwo record labels, and her work has been supported by the MAP Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts and the Aaron Copland Fund. Current projects include the improvising orchestra, the duo B. Experimental Band; a suite for sextet inspired by Italo Calvino’s Cosmicomics; and a new podcast opera in collaboration with writer Beth Lisick, about relationships at the dawn of the Internet.

https://www.lisamezzacappa.com/

Photo by Luz y Fuerza: Cine Expandido