SONIC ECCENTRICITY

culture@dailylobo.com

One of Carmina Escobar’s online videos depicts a sea of undulating fake jewels accompanied by a noise that sounds like a helicopter drone mixed with the noise of a hair dryer.

Escobar, who performs with The Chuppers next month at the Kosmos, is an experimental musician and artist who uses her voice and various electronic devices to create sound.

“I typically never deal with text because I think it has a very deterministic message,” Escobar said. “I usually like to work with sound that’s just sound. So it’s basically a sonic experience.”

Her performances are improvisational yet structured. So she often has a set idea of what’s going to happen with the sound, but the smaller details within a piece can change.

“I work a lot within structures, but free-form,” Escobar said. “I have a variety of material and I know my instrument. Usually I have a very specific path, but what happens within that path depends on the precise moment.”

Assistant music professor José-Luis Hurtado said Escobar sings classical music as well as contemporary and experimental music. He said the traditional music is a basis for innovative, modern creations.

“You need to know the tradition before doing something new, like in any other discipline,” Hurtado said. “If we think about Chopin, Bach, Haydn — all of them played contemporary music. For some reason, we don’t play contemporary music anymore. We tend to play music that is 500 years old, which is great too, but Chopin didn’t do it, Bach didn’t do it, Beethoven didn’t do it.”

Hurtado said Escobar performs a variety of styles, including her own music. Sometimes she hooks up sensors to her fingers that connect to a computer linked to a microphone near her mouth. She then physically reacts to the sound by moving her hands and other body parts.

“We mainly do new music, because that’s the area where we think we can contribute much more than traditional music,” Hurtado said. “We need performers that know how to perform new music.”

La Voz Esquizofrénica
Thursday, Feb. 28, 6:30 p.m.
Keller Hall
For more information, visit
music.unm.edu/news_events and click
“Latin American Concert and Speaker Series”