Wilfrido Terrazas: The Torres Cycle

Mexican flutist and composer Wilfrido Terrazas conceived this epic work as a meditation on different sorts of perception, deftly embracing the four cardinal direction points as the focus in the primary movements. Naturally, what we see, hear, and feel depends on where we are: as Amy Cimini’s poetic liner note essay spells out, what we experience in one location could be totally different in another. It’s heady stuff, but Terrazas, a member of the superb Mexico City ensemble Liminar, has enlisted an impressive cast of interpreters fluent in both notated and improvised music to illuminate these notions. “Torre del Norte” features a shape-shifting brass sextet and electronics expertly warping loose written themes. The perpetually changing timbre, propulsion, and density indicate a certain mutability as the listener seeks to get their bearings straight. “Torre del Sur” employs double bass and a string quartet to sketch out a whispery upper register drift into chaotic mid-range density, rife with striated tones, twang, and delicious ambiguity. Interspersed within these four “Torre” movements are shorter but less substantive “totems,” such as “Tótem I, Camino sobre la tierra,” where Juliana Gaona’s elastic oboe threads the meditative percussive clangs of Rebecca Lloyd-Jones through an effectively arcing structure.

— Peter Margasak, 4.27.2022

New Focus Recordings has released The Torres Cycle, a new CD by Wilfrido Terrazas containing seven tracks of original music composed between 2014 and 2021. Subtitled ‘A Musical Ritual for the Seven Cardinal Directions’, this album explores the significance of direction, place and culture as expressed by the proximity of Southern California to Mexico. As stated in the liner notes: “A deepened relation to cardinal orientation loosens social order and transforms common wisdom oppositions into liminal spaces: the cycle’s sonic presences are improvisational, but its figurations monumental; its scope at once historical, mythological and speculative…” Wilfrido Terrazas is a prolific composer with over 380 world premiers in 20 countries throughout Europe and the Americas. He is a master flutist and educator who is constantly exploring the unique cultural relationship between his place of residence in San Diego and his native Ensenada, Mexico. The Torres Cycle continues this important work with an album performed by top-flight area musicians.

‘Torre’ is Spanish for tower and each of the tracks in the album represent a musical expression inspired by looking outward in a certain direction. Orientation and direction are of great historical and cultural significance in Mexico – think of the celestial alignment of Mayan ceremonial buildings or the dramatic ritual of the Voladores: daring young men representing the four cardinal directions, who fling themselves off a high platform and twirl downward over one hundred feet secured only by ropes around their ankles. Even in our contemporary society, direction has a fundamental influence on our awareness. Along the west coast of Mexico and California, facing east generally means seeing mountains while to the west is the sea and the sunset; both inspire very different emotions. In California, facing south connects our imagination with Mexican culture while the obverse is true facing north from Baja. Terrazas exploits the connection between direction and imagination to create a cross-cultural dialogue expressed in contemporary musical forms.

The opening track, Torre del Norte (2018) explores the four cardinal directions of North, East, South and West. The piece is written for any number of brass players and opens with trumpets sounding long sustained tones. These start on the same nominal note, but the players soon bend the pitches to create new and dramatic dissonance and harmonies. As new tones are added, the tension rises and the texture swells and falls with changes in pitch and volume. At 3:00 the pitches again change with more notes with faster rhythms resulting in a flurry of independent passages flying through the air. The complexity builds to an almost chaotic level with lots of trills, tremolos and rapid runs – perhaps a comment on life north of the border? The playing here is quite amazing, especially in the lower brass. More and more extended techniques and special sounds arrive in broken phrases and uncoordinated rhythms. At length, the ensemble settles down and there is a languid stretch with more conventional tones and harmonies – there is an expansive, Duke Ellington feel to this, perhaps reflecting the rich and savory culture south of the border. The dissonance slowly rises as does the volume, increasing the sense of drama even as the piece suddenly halts in mid-stride. Expertly realized by the brass, Torre del Norte is a powerful reminder of the range of emotions that are evoked when simply facing different directions.

Track 4, Tótem II, Miro hacia el cielo (2019), explores another significant direction – in this case up. Scored for any number of piccolo players, this opens with a long, sustained piccolo tone whose pitch is slightly bent even as others join in at almost the same frequency. All of this soon becomes shrill and very penetrating. The sounds bounce around in the listener’s ear becoming almost painful at times. Short, breathy sounds are heard in the background providing some relief while the pitches in the foreground climb ever higher. By 4:20 some piccolo notes are heard in a more conventional register and this soon evolves into rapid runs and phrases that increase in complexity. The lines are independent and flighty, resembling nothing so much as a flock of chirping birds. At 6:50 the piccolos return to multiple sustained sounds with pitches that are within a few cycles of each other. This slows down to a stretch of breathy sounds that bring out a remote and desolate feeling. A flurry of active phrases appear amid the windy sounds but these gradually decline in number until fading at the finish. Tótem II, Miro hacia el cielo artfully captures exactly what you would expect looking upward into nature’s sky.

Tótem I, Camino sobre la tierra (2019), track 2, roughly translates to ‘I walk on the earth’ and is more introspective. Soft gong chimes followed by silence open this, creating a mystical and exotic feeling. The oboe enters with long, mournful tones that bend upward in pitch. The percussion continues independently, allowing the oboe to continue the exploration of an unknown emotional terrain. At length, a drum beat is heard as the oboe line turns shrill, producing a sense of distant menace. A flurry of oboe runs and percussion sounds follow, bringing Coltrane briefly to mind. The oboe ceases and soft percussive notes fade quietly to the finish. In Camino sobre la tierra it is clear that the most exotic direction is inward.

The other four tracks offer further perspectives on the inner influence of direction. Torre del Sur (2014) or ‘to the south’ is scored for five bowed string parts and opens with very soft sounds suggesting a quiet and rural landscape. More intense and complex stretches arise that sound happily chaotic in detail, yet are cohesive in the whole. There are also soft interludes so that one is reminded of the many complex cultures that are scattered throughout the mostly wide open spaces of the Mexican countryside.

Amy Cimini’s excellent liner notes state that “With Torre del Oeste, the cycle ends with laughter, facing west.” This piece is scored for any number of woodwinds and, as each player enters in turn, the intensity increases and exotic harmonies multiply. This piece can be quietly mysterious at times, becoming more actively shrill and almost painful to the ear. The woodwind players confidently navigate this complex musical terrain as alternating cycles of frenzy and repose continue throughout. Slowly the sounds de-escalate and become just a few solitary twitters, declining in volume as the piece fades to a close. Torre del Oeste certainly could be the musical equivalent of ‘gales of laughter’ and is a fitting conclusion to The Torres Cycle.

Using the concepts of direction and location, The Torres Cycle seeks to delineate the confluence of our cross-border cultures. Wilfrido Terrazas continues to build bridges of cultural understanding through the language of new music.

— Paul Muller, 6.06.2022

Wilfredo Terrazas is a Mexican composer, musicologist, and flute teacher. Similar to Trapani, he uses 'folk' elements - but in a much more 'direct' way. 'Torres Cycle' is a ritual implementation of the four cardinal directions, plus three 'minor' rituals. The release "explores ritual, indigenous tradition from his native Mexico, alternative notation, structured improvisation, spatialised live performance techniques, and an evocative instrumentation layout to explore questions of social connection and the mysterious relationship between tradition, and history, and the present." Well. I get the bit about 'spatialised performances', but this does not necessarily serve a purpose on an audio recording.

The first track, 'North,' is a layered trumpet and trombone piece with a genuine 'Mexican' element (the marching bands). It is well known that wind instruments are difficult to keep in tone and that playing long notes in parallel can wreak havoc. I am sure this was done on purpose here, with the timbre wavering until the piece breaks out into a more chaotic section. Unfortunately, contextualising 'ritual' with recordings by the Hybryds, I fail to be able to follow the intention here - what remains is the audio. And in 'Norte' I would have preferred the layered micro-harmonies to evolve to full strength, leaving out the 'improvised' bit. 'Este' is a percussion piece that creates a 'searching' atmosphere. 'Sur' has a set of string instruments alternating between quiet sections and 'explosions' into free parts. 'Oeste' is a wind quartet. The last two pieces, 'Totem III' and 'Oeste' sound most 'Mexican' to me (in a positive sense) and are the strongest on the release (including the first part of 'Norte', of course) - one using a bugle, the other a flute, and musical phrases that remind of Mexican influence. Nevertheless, the 'eclectic' backdrop of ritual and setting is nothing I would have picked up on without reading the liner notes.

— Robert Steinberger, 4.19.2022

The Ensenada-born flutist and UC San Diego music professor Wilfrido Terrazas released a new album of compositions, "The Torres Cycle," a collection of seven compositions anchored by four "torre" works, each representing a direction: del Norte, del Sur, del Este and del Oeste. Between each torre is an interstitial "tótem." Each track is so distinct, with unique instrumentation, though the recording as a whole feels fluidly epic. I was drawn to one of the tótems, the second track: "Tótem I, Camino sobre la tierra," which features an oboe and percussion. On this composition, Juliana Gaona plays oboe like it's something else entirely: flexing, splitting and bending its sound against the curious percussion of Rebecca Lloyd-Jones. The album was primarily recorded at UC San Diego, then mixed in Mexico City.

— Julia Dixon Evans, 5.04.2022

On the face of it The Torres Cycle, composed between 2014 and 2021 by Mexican composer Wilfrido Terrazas, is a seven-part work devoted to the compass points of north, south, east, and west, adding three other intervening movements. The compass points are torres (towers) while the intervening movements are called tótems. Once this simple outline is grasped, very little else can be. Conceptual music has existed for a long time now, and The Torres Cycle carries a mountain of conceptualizing on its shoulders. If you are attuned to verbal mystification combined with ritual, improvisation, electronica, and a tolerance for microtonal dissonance, you are slotted perfectly into the groove of this album. I doubt that any other audience is realistically anticipated, although Terrazas aims for his music to lead to reconciliation in these divisive times.

The program notes are dense with indecipherable and lofty aspirations. A very simple example: “For Terrazas, the cardinal directions draw reciprocal movements across time and space to create new media for social connection.” You can approach such a project as having planetary significance or descending into chaotic folderol. Let me apply a chain saw to break through the booklet’s thicket of jargon. Except in the imagination of the composer and presumably the Torres Collective (gathered around the music department at the University of California San Diego), this isn’t music of reconciliation. It is experimental music of the kind that excites performers if they want a walk on the wild side and hip followers who keep the experimental scene afloat.

Drawing, we are told, on Meso-American myth and ritual, The Torres Cycle outlines its own ritual practices, which begin by having the musicians face north, south, east, and west at various times in the seven movements (I’ll confess that I don’t know why the four cardinal directions are referred to as seven in the work’s subtitle). It immediately becomes apparent that shorn of rhetorical trappings, Terrazas takes small groups of related instruments and lets each loose to improvise at will—individual performers don’t even need to be together, as noted by the widely separated dates and locations within each movement.

For example, the first movement, “Torre del Norte,” which is devoted to north on the compass, is for any number of brass instruments, in this case five trumpets, three trombones, euphonium, and electronics, who were recorded (or recorded themselves) on five different dates in unrelated locales—Mexico, Vermont, Los Angeles, and San Diego. The only common element is the composer’s direction of which compass point to face. There is only vague mention of a notated score.

In its high-pitched textures, microtonal wavering, and total absence of ensemble, “Torre del Norte” sounds like a tribe of coyotes howling outside your door and growing increasingly crazy. Strangeness of sound is crucial to the whole cycle. The instrumentation is unique for each movement and includes percussion and oboe (“Tótem 1”), three percussionists (“Torre del Este”), four piccolos (“Tótem II”), and trumpet with double bass (“Tótem III”). Having eliminated ensemble or even proximity, and allowing for maximal improvisation, the result isn’t simply a bag of cats, although it is that.

Just as dominant as chaos, however, are timbral effects, in other words, unusual sounds from familiar instruments. “Torre del Sur” calls for a string quartet and double bass (not necessarily together) making cries and whispers in high harmonics, sparsely textured and calling on silences in between sounds. The timbral gestures in each movement are varied and ingenious, and since this seems to be Terrazas’s specialty, timbre serves as a good entry point for the listener. Each movement lasts 10 minutes on average and the bag of cats aspect is continuous, so The Torres Cycle was only tolerable—here I speak solely for myself—one movement at a time, with generous spacing until the next movement was attempted.

I’m aware that little in this review encourages the reader to come within a mile of this album, but Terrazas is prominent and respected in his field, particularly as a flutist—he has premiered 380 (!) new works and composed 70 works of his own. He has performed in over 20 countries and recorded more than 40 albums. Besides his birth and training in Mexico, he studied in San Diego and has some connection with the university there that isn’t specified.

At this point you will know where you stand in respect to an experimental performance project like The Torres Cycle. The scene that Terrazas works inside constitutes a post-avant-garde avant-garde, as it were. It seems to be thriving and has fervent adherents. I must attest, however, that the scene is hard for an outsider to peer into without a sense of bewilderment.

— Huntley Dent, 8.30.2022

The ambitious composer Wilfrido Terrazas presents us a 7 part album here, where ritual, indigenous tradition from his native Mexico, alternative notation, structured improvisation and spatialized live performance techniques make for a very expressive and unique body of work.

“Torre del Norte” opens the listen with much atmosphere, where several trumpets, trombones and euphonium are present in very unorthodox ways that use the instruments for ambience, and “Tótem I, Camino sobre la tierra” follows with Juliana Gaona’s oboe and Rebecca Lloyd-Jones’ percussion emitting a very mysterious tone that hints at classical sounds in very unconventional ways.

In the middle, “Tótem II, Miro hacia el cielo” recruits 4 piccolos that interact with a very iconoclastic droning appeal, while “Tótem III, Estoy en el centro” squeals with trumpet from Alexandria Smith and contrabass by Kathyryn Schulmeister that rumbles with a low intensity.

The final track, “Torre del Oeste”, mashes flute, oboe, english horn, clarinet and bass clarinet into a wind focused presence that’s cathartic while spiraling with much intrigue.

A very fluid, powerful and timbral diverse outing, Terrazas and company create a globally significant and atypically energetic listen here, and it’s something you’re not going to hear anywhere else.

— Tom Haugen, 8.03.2022