Writing residency for a creation scheduled for May 9, 2026 as part of the Propagations Festival, at the GMEM in Marseille.
¿Hasta cuándo? is a musical creation project dealing with the armed conflict in Colombia, the country of origin of composer Daniel Alvarado Bonilla. The new piece he is planning, lasting around fifteen minutes, will be written for an instrumental sextet - flute, clarinet, percussion and string trio - to which an electronic part will be added.
For this electronic part, the composer wishes to integrate oral testimonies from victims of the conflict, which he himself collected and recorded during fieldwork in Colombia. In this context, he visited the Peace Community of San José de Apartadó, located in the Urabá region. This community, made up of peasants living in surrounding hamlets and villages, declared itself neutral in 1997, refusing to take part in the conflict between state forces, paramilitary militias and guerrillas. This decision, peaceful and resolutely committed, has had serious consequences for its inhabitants since the community was founded: repression, forced displacement and massacres.
The composer's aim is to integrate the spoken voices of four inhabitants of the community, like invisible recitations. The idea is to give the work both a documentary and testimonial dimension, highlighting the repercussions of the past conflict in today's Colombia, while underlining the universal scope of a story of resilience. In this approach, Daniel Alvarado Bonilla also pursues the exploration of lo-fi sonorities, of "sonic vestiges", with the intention of musically recreating the dust, degradation and erosion caused by the passage of time.
Coproduction
Casa de Velázquez ; l'Ensemble L'Itinéraire
Support
GMEM - Centre national de création musicale (Marseille); Université PSL (in partnership with CNSMDP - doctoral program SACRe)
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla
Composer
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla began his musical training by studying electric and classical guitar. After graduating as an instrumentalist in Bogotá, he turned to composition, choosing France to pursue his studies. Following his post-graduate studies, he collaborated with ensembles and soloists such as Pablo Márquez, Cameron Crozman, the Xenon Saxophone Quartet, Ensemble L'Itinéraire, Ensemble Almaviva, Ensemble Alkymia and Quatuor Diotima, among others. His works have been performed in several countries and in prestigious venues and festivals such as the Centre Pompidou, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Lyon, the Cité de la Voix in Vézelay, the Venice Biennale, the Festival Manifeste, the Scène nationale d'Orléans, the Festival Électrocution in Brest, as part of the France-Colombia year (2017), and on Radio France's "Création Mondiale" radio program. Daniel Alvarado Bonilla was one of the residents (class of 2023 - 2024) of the artistic residency at Casa de Velázquez. He is currently pursuing a doctorate in SACRe research and creation at the Université PSL and the CNSMDP. He is also a laureate of the Fondation Banque Populaire.
L'Ensemble Itinéraire
Instrumental ensemble
L'Itinéraire is one of Europe's leading ensembles for new music. Since its foundation in 1973, the Ensemble has contributed to the emergence of spectral music, based on listening to sound and represented by composers Gérard Grisey, Michaël Lévinas, Tristan Murail and Hugues Dufourt.
Today, directed by Lucia Peralta, l'Itinéraire relies on soloists of the highest calibre, whose diverse talents blend generations and practices to dare to explore all the limits of sound: acoustic saturation, electrification, the unheard-of spaces of electronics, as well as improvisation, open-air concerts and societal experimentation.
Widely recognized as a place for musical exploration and creation, l'Itinéraire is committed to three main axes: the creation and dissemination of today's music, the transmission of knowledge through cultural actions and professional integration programs, and the exploration of innovative formats such as open-air performances and in situ projects, taking on key social issues such as ecology.
An internationally renowned ensemble, it regularly collaborates with Ircam-Centre Pompidou, Radio France and CNCM, and has performed in the USA, Mexico, South America, Israel, Japan and most of Europe.
Daniel Alvarado Bonilla
composer