Germán Toro Pérez
*4 March 1964
Works by Germán Toro Pérez
Biography
Germán Toro Pérez (Bogotá *1964)
Studies in music theory at the Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá and composition at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Studies on electroacoustics and computer music in Vienna and Paris.
His output includes instrumental, electroacoustic compositions and cross-disciplinary works. His music theater work «Journey to Comala» after «Pedro Páramo» by Juan Rulfo was premiered 2017 in Zurich. Recent pieces were commissioned by the Mondrian Ensemble, Basel, the ORF Radio Symphonie Orchestra/Wien Modern, the ensemble soyus21, Zurich, and the ensemble XXI jahrhundert, Vienna.
He was head of the computer music course (1999-2006) and visiting professor for composition (2006-7) at the University of Music and Performing Arts, Vienna. Since 2007 he is professor for electroacoustic composition and director of the ICST - Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology – at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Publications in the fields of composition, theory and aesthetics of electroacoustic music, artistic research, and the performance practice of electroacoustic music. His current research topic at ICST is the performance practice of live electronic music.
About the music
«From the very beginning, my music was driven by the desire to take aspects of life, of everyday life and of reality as a starting point and to transform them into musical form through processes of abstraction. On the other hand, my music is characterized by recurrent conversations; with Borges, Pessoa, Rothko, Wolfli, Arguedas, Rulfo... Through this, and especially through these ‹conversations with the dead›, I have dealt with issues that touch existential nuclei: the contradictory, prismatic identity of modern man and the word as the basis of the construction of worlds. Especially through the confrontation with José María Arguedas and with Juan Rulfo I have come to understand the insurmountable mythical basis of Latin American culture, codified in language.»
Germán Toro Pérez' works deal on the one hand with morphological aspects of sound (e.g. Estudio de Ruidos y Campanas, Arco, Onda, Partita), microtonality (z.B. Arco, Trazos, Trazos II) or the perception of space (Rothko II-IV, Figuras y Espejos, Diálogos Inciertos). On the other hand they deal with extra-musical topics, such as the fragmentary experience of reality (Inventario I-III) or the ontological function of language (Drama em Gente, Stadtplan von New York, Inventario IV). The work of F. Pessoa, A. Wölfli, J.M. Arguedas and J. Rulfo has been fundamental. Other pieces were developed within the context of artistic research, such as the theater production Disembodied Voice, the generative meta-piece Mikrostudien, or Lot, a piece based on co-developed feedback-tubes. The music theater work Journey to Comala based on Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo (premiered 2017) closes a series of pieces related to the singular work of the Mexican writer. It brings together different approaches to electroacoustic composition (live-electronics, generative synthesis, acousmatics), as well as to instrumental and vocal composition.
