Angélica Negrón, the Puerto Rican composer, and singer, and accordionist, who’s possibly the only composer in the world to have written music for plants. Brooklynites will know from her electronic Indie band, Balún: you might know her as a past composer in residence with the Albany Symphony and now – well, Yo Yo Ma is debuting her cello concerto in L.A., she’s just had her Carnegie Hall debut, and her calendar includes Opera Philadelphia and the New York Phil. Her music is as vibrant as her personality, with her bright purple hair and joyful spirit. It’s rhythmic, mysterious, melodic, serious and whimsical. You can’t talk about it without delighting in her playfulness. There is always the sense that she wants to let you in on a secret.
Born in 1981 on the outskirts of San Juan, the birthplace of Reggaeton, she grew up playing piano and violin at the Conservatory of Music and never thought of composing as a thing until she fell in love with film music at the University of Puerto Rico – Bernard Hermann & Hitchcock, Nino Rota & Fellini, and so on. So then it was the big move to study film music in New York, not even realising that that would mean composition, and blossoming under the teaching of Tania León. Her big break came in 2008 when she connected with Transit ensemble, leading to a snowball effect of commissions and a teaching post at the Very Young Composers program at the New York Phil. The music for plants – bananas, and cactuses and Birds of Paradise and so on – she creates with her computer! turning them with touch into synthesisers.
“Remember that the things you might feel make you weird or peculiar or like you don’t belong are your superpowers”, she says, “and what will make you stand out from the rest. Own them, embrace them, and run with them”
Angélica Negrón (1981 – )
MUSIC: Conversación a distancia
Ensemble PI
Presented by Anna Clyne
Written and produced by Charlotte Wilson for WMHT
