IV Short Stories at the Standard Hotel, Op. 6, written for string quartet, two singers, and voice, are based on short stories written by composer Julián De La Chica during his first months living in New York. The Scorchio Quartet and tenor Jose Heredia explore the possibility of the stories as fractures where light eventually enters. Two singers perform voices making “noise,” evoking the soundscape of everyday repetition. The set is a look at this meeting place where everyone is alone. The big city gives them a break when they simply sit and listen as ephemeral flowers on a table at the Standard Hotel.

The Concert
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Monday, March 28, 2016, 7:30 PM @ Carnegie Hall in New York City, IGM celebrated the IGM 2016 GALA CONCERT. The concert premieres works by New York based Colombian composer Julián De La Chica: String Quartet No.1 Op. 7 performed by Scorchio Quartet and Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op.6 performed by Tenor José Heredia. Julián De La Chica, a post minimalist, takes on the challenge of exploring different ways of listening to the world.

Program Notes
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The modern age is all about saturation. The music of Julián De La Chica takes on the challenge of exploring different ways of listening to the world. Listening to this perspective can be daunting to the contemporary ear. The notion of complexity as synonymous with Quality, the saturation of the sound landscape and productions that represent the so-called post-post-symphonic great culture deafens us ... why? The reason lies in our need for saturation, rational self-complacency in excess, in the spectacle where nudity is not enough; where open flesh and blood, even death, do not sate us … 

The works gathered in this concert tie a sole string.  They are the anatomy of a knot, as in the Japanese art of shibari literally "bind" the saturated body, and this bond, releasing the possibility of sensuality and sophisticated listening. In the first half of the concert, a selection of Mr. De La Chica's  works for piano: Prelude Op. 8 No. 1 (Premiere) and Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5, No.1 Illumination and No. 6, Retrospective (Included in his latest album: Nocturnal & Circular Images Op. 5 - IGM, 2015) accompany the premiere of his String Quartet No. 1 Op. 7 (V Cycles) performer by the Scorchio Quartet, known by its versatility and sound in music ranging from Philip Glass to David Bowie.

Mr. De La Chica composed a piece for a string quartet that communes with his Cycle Op. 5. This work does not speak of the Colombian composer living in New York City; it is a pilgrimage. The piano and the string quartet are traces of this journey of identity which is, in short, destruction. The inner sound, is the deepest for those who create from the musical abyss. Sound culture around us weaves nets like mermaid songs and Penelope mantles ... he who seeks his sound needs to choose; and home is not always Ithaca. Mr. De La Chica, as Samuel Beckett, knows that companionship is being "alone" and, as in the nighttime images of William Blake, speaks of the unfathomable path with the smallest gesture of a human hand.

The concert is based on a single principle: think saturation from the possibility of a "Trans-minimal-aggression". Mr. De La Chica considers himself to be an "experimenter", not a "composer". However, he creates a micro-universe from atomic naked sound. The skin is a set of pores traversed by particles of world. The music of Mr. De La Chica explores the liminal atomic spaces between these pores and the world.

Susan Campos - Fonseca, PhD
Musicologist and composer

LIsten to Jose Heredia
live at Carnegie Hall
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Photo Credits
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Tenor José Heredia
Scorchio Quartet
Special guests (from the Young New Yorkers' Chorus - YNYC)
Elisa Nikoloulias - Soprano
Anthony Majewski - Bass
Michael Kerschner - Conductor &
Julián De La Chica - Piano

During the “World Premiere” of
Four Short Stories at the Standard Hotel Op. 6
Photo by Eugene Manning