KOMMAS ENSEMBLE
BIO
Juan Andrés Vergara (1990)
I am a composer, producer and guitarist from Mexico City with an intuitive and empirical approach to music. I mix concert music, studio work, composing for media, songwriting, performing live with indie projects and I love feeding ideas from one area to another.
I am currently exploring instrumental alignments with electric guitar in a concert music setting, as well as the inclusion of electronic resources in a language that feels integrated. My latest project Ornitographies will be premiered by JACK Quartet next month and explores diffuseness, using interactions between the instruments that mimic reverb and delay, as well as a subtle level of randomness. I am also working on songs for my band Plano and finishing the score of a Thriller Feature film.
My music has also been performed and released by soloists and ensembles like, Wild Up, Alterity Co, Jeffrey Zeigler, OFUNAM Philarmonic Orchestra, Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Quinteto de Alientos de la Ciudad de México, and Irvine Arditti. Mainly in Mexico and the US. I have made music for media over the last twelve years participating in short films, feature films, multimedia installations, advertising, and documentaries with international recognition in festivals like Cannes Marche du Film and Rotterdam. I also have collaborated writing for mexican pop artists such as María León, Belinda and Río Roma. The later´s song Tan Solo Un Minuto reached no.1 on iTunes Mexico.
I studied my Bachelor´s degree in Mexico at CIEM. I am a Licenciate in Music Theory and Composition by the London College of Music. I participated in the LA Phil´s National Composers Intensive under Andrew Norman´s direction, which lead me to pursue the Master´s in Compositon at New York University.
I love working with people and creating strong bounds. I love music, so I say that before composer I am a music. I love food, I love walking and knowing new places. I just love what I do and I put my heart into it.
LINES: DESERT WHISPERS
The piece that I am sharing includes the electric guitar as part of the chamber ensemble, particularly blended with the piano and the vibraphone. Here is the program note, a recording and the score:
An ancient mountain arises in the middle of the mexican desert. Although it feels inherent to the landscape, it is of a different nature. Unlike the mountains around it, it once was a city built of clay. Now it has been reduced to vestiges; worn out by the air with quiet whispers and shaped little by little to blend with the environment.
At ground level, the city looks like any other mountain, complex in its form and impossible to decipher; but viewed from the right angle, the lines that interwove chaotically at first organize like a fish shoal and reveal its geometric maze of aisles.
Imagine entering a dark room. It´s just black. After some time, you start noticing some shades. Eventually they end up turning into clear forms, so it´s not just black anymore. Senses sharpen when they are forced to perceive where apparently there is nothing. So, if you choose to force yourself into the desert, you can start noticing the subtle chaos of a mountain and then a hidden geometric maze but, with patience and will, you might even end up hearing the whispers of the air.