Ricardo Llorca

Biography

Ricardo Llorca (born 1958, Alicante) is a Spanish-American composer based in New York City since 1988. Llorca is a Juilliard School graduate and a faculty member of "The Juilliard School of Music Evening Division" since 1995. In addition, he is a Composer-in-residence for the New York-based contemporary dance company Henning Rübsam's Sensedance " and a composer-in-residence of NYOS ("The New York Opera Society") since 2008. His work includes operas such as "Las Horas Vacías" ("The Empty Hours") and the opera "Tres Sombreros de Copa " ("Three Top Hats"). Llorca is also a composer of symphonic, chamber, choral, and music for theater, movies, and television. Some of Ricardo Llorca's sources for his thematic inspiration are taken from his Mediterranean roots, mixed with elements of contemporary music.

Cultural management

Throughout his career, Ricardo Llorca has fostered partnerships with public and private institutions to advance the appreciation of contemporary and classical music. Since 2008 he has been working as Composer-in-Residence and deputy director at The New York Opera Society, collaborating with Jennifer Cho in organizing concerts and cultural events, seeking sponsorships, programming and selecting artists, etc. Examples of this are the four seasons in which he has organized, through NYOS, the Christmas Concerts of the Italian Embassy in Washington DC; various chamber music recitals at the Smithsonian Museum and the National Gallery in Washington DC; the World Financial Center in New York City; the United Nations Dag Hammarskjold Auditorium; the Chicago Cultural Center; the Teresa Carreño Auditorium in Caracas; the Sao Pedro Theater in São Paulo, the Tapia Theater and the Ibero-American Festival of Arts in Puerto Rico, among others.
Also since 1994 he has been a music programmer and member of the Cultural Committee of the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute in New York City where he has organised recitals and concerts with figures such as Giuliano Belotti, Mac McClure, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Veronica Villarroel, Rosa Torres- Pardo, Carmen Bravo de Mompou, Alex Garrobé, etc.

Style

In the words of the author: "We composers do not necessarily have to explain what we do, since many times what we write is nothing more than a mere product of our intuition and not of reflection. Also, when we compose we have to forget about the technique, as much as we can, and get carried away by what we want to express at a given time. I also try to move away from composing "collages" or any other obvious form of "eclecticism" trying to achieve a unity of language, a solid structure from the beginning to the end of the work. Then, there is no doubt that in recent years artistic trends have been less and less radical. Looking back, specifically to the 1980s, one can recognise a wide movement towards a more traditional and conservative orientation among composers of different temperaments and stylistic ideas. Obviously, I am one of them".
Rubén Jordán writes in his essay "An Approach to Transfigured History": “Ricardo Llorca's music also stands out for its duality. The duality of clear formal structures and the development of materials based on intuition and traditional compositional techniques, all filtered by a hint of minimalism in which everything is relevant, fresh and brave."
Another aspect of Llorca's compositional tasks is that he is also the author of the librettos and texts of some of his works. His are the lyrics of "The Dark Side" and "Tres sombreros de Copa", and the original libretto of "Las Horas Vacías".

Recordings

"Tres piezas para piano y orquesta" ("El Tiempo Malherido") /"RTVE Música"/ 2004
"Concierto Italiano" /"Columna Música"/2005
"Tres Piezas para Piano Académica" /Columna Música/2005 /RTVE Música /2005
"The Dark Side"/Columna Música/2005
"Las Horas Vacias - The Empty Hours" / Columna Música/ 2011
"Handeliana"/ Naxos/ 2013