Orchestra’s January concert to feature guest conductor, flutist

This Saturday, Jan. 26 at 7 p.m., guest conductor Álvaro G. Díaz-Rodríguez and flute soloist Wilfrido Terrazas will join the orchestra for a performance of Verdi’s “Overture to ‘La Forza del Destino,’” Griffes’ “Poem for Flute and Orchestra,” and Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 5 in C minor.”

Díaz-Rodríguez has guest conducted for orchestras, choirs, chamber music festivals and operas from Mexico to Amsterdam. He has worked with many renowned musicians and artists, from opera singer Placido Domingo to Mexican flutist and recording artist, Horatio Franco. As a conductor, Díaz-Rodríguez has premiered various works for many foreign composers as well as the unpublished works of José Pablo Moncayo.

Skilled also in his study of the oboe, Díaz-Rodríguez toured with the San Diego Youth Symphony on their 1992 tour of Italy. As both a conductor and oboist, Díaz-Rodríguez has recorded five different CDs and has presented at many concerts, music festivals, lectures, and congresses in Mexico, the United States, Holland, France, Spain, Belgium, England, Italy, China, Portugal, Switzerland, Canada, Cuba, and Argentina. As a published writer, Díaz-Rodríguez has appeared in many books and magazines discussing art, music, and contemporary aesthetics.

Díaz-Rodríguez first studied music at the Center for Musical Studies at the Autonomous University of Baja California, or UABC, then continued his studies at the National School of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico. At Universidad Católica Argentina he finished his doctorate in the study of music, specializing in historical musicology. Díaz-Rodríguez is currently a musical director of the Chamber Orchestra of Ensenada, a full-time research professor at the UABC, and a coordinator of the postgraduate research program at the Faculty of Arts UABC-Ensenada.

Terrazas is a San Diego-based flutist of Mexican origin whose career reaches back to the 1990s. His career has standing in performance, commissioning, collaboration, improvisation, composition, and pedagogy. His recent activity has been focused on finding a conjunction within notated and improvised music while seeking to innovate the world of musical collaboration. Terrazas is a both a founding member and herald of Generación Espontánea, a improvisation collective based out of Mexico City. He has performed almost 400 world premieres, and since 2012, has been a member of Liminar Ensemble. Since 2014, Terrazas has been a co-curator for an Ensenada improvised music festival called La Semana de Improvisación.

In composition, Terrazas maintains his interests in the collaboration of notation and improvisation, and has composed over 50 works for many diverse instrumental forces, all while remaining a committed educator. Terrazas taught at the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia and at the Escuela Superior de Músico in Mexico City. In 2017 he was appointed as assistant professor in Contemporary Music Performance in flute at the University of California, San Diego.

The La Sierra University Orchestra concert will be held at Hole Memorial Auditorium. Tickets are $15 for general admission, $10 for seniors aged 55 and over, and $5 for students with identification. For further information call 951-785-2036 or email music@lasierra.edu.