The Atlas Ensemble is a place where a number of immensely rich musical cultures meet and create something new, something that transcends and redefines our notions of music today. My piece is an ode to this ensemble, the Atlas project, and the idea of cultural exchange and hybridization.

Thus the title: Mestizo, a word that is used to describe mixed race, and a defining characteristic of the Latin American culture in which I was raised.

Each of the three texts that are used in the piece is a reflection on a different aspect of cultural exchange. The first, Luz y Mar, which is used in the first half of the piece, describes the moment in which two beautiful natural bodies converge creating unimaginable splendor. The second, Hombre Mestizo, which is used for the second half of the piece, is a short portrayal of a Mestizo man, with unusual physical characteristics and a lost identity. The third text, from which only the first verse is used, is a eulogy to the utopian vision of the Atlas Ensemble, a bilingual dream.

Musically the piece follows the concepts of each of these texts. The setting of Luz y Mar consists of deeply impressionistic passages, in which complex colors are created by the refraction of crystalline musical gestures, always gravitating around the female voice. In Hombre Mestizo, on the other hand, a dark atmosphere is constructed by the obfuscation and juxtaposition of musical references. The female voice goes in and out of the texture only to emerge at the end to question its identity. The piece vanishes with the short fragment of Sueño Bilingüe, an appropriate synopsis of the beauty of composing for a utopian bilingual project, which will not cease to exist as long as we have the Atlas Ensemble.

The piece is dedicated to Joël Bons, founder of the Atlas project.