Aquava New Music Studio is an artists’ production group that selects and presents projects involving recently created art music, through concerts, commissions, premieres, recordings, film and television music, workshops, and music publications. Collaborating with virtuoso musicians, Aquava presents new music at the highest level, often in new and innovative contexts.
Aquava New Music Studio was founded originally as Aguavá New Music Studio by conductor Carmen Helena Téllez and composer Cary Boyce, later joined by flutist and events producer Alain Barker. Projects included appearances at the International Festival Cervantino in Mexico, the International Tempus Fugit Music Festival in Israel, and tours to Mexico and Colombia. Aguavá collaborated with such ensembles as eighth blackbird, the Contemporary Chamber Players of Chicago/ Contempo, and the Pocket Opera Players of New York and Chicago; and worked closely with composers such as Ralph Shapey, Stephen Hartke, John Eaton, Shulamit Ran, Yehuda Yannay, Eric Richards, Gerardo Dirié, and many others in the presentation of their music. Aguavá New Music Studio produced and performed the soundtracks for film scores as well as television. We were featured in the syndicated programs Center Stage from Wolftrap and Harmonia.
You can read a list of artists with whom we have collaborated, and see our projects’ archive. We are grateful to our presenters, funders, and supporting organizations for their enthusiastic support of our projects.
After 2006, Aguavá New Music Studio took a hiatus to allow its directors to fulfill demanding independent projects in academia and public radio. Throughout this time Carmen, Cary and Alain continued to develop projects at Indiana University’s Jacobs School of Music, Latin American Music Center and WFIU Public Radio; as well as with the Bloomington Early Music Festival and Spokane’s KPBX Public Radio. You can read about these achievements in the artists’ bios.
These projects have provided a depth of experience and imagination.We have decided to return to working together, with a new iteration of our artistic concept under our new name, AQUAVA, to produce a new recording projects and commissioned special events. Aquava also has opened a new stream of interdisciplinary activity by initiating Kosmologia Music and Intermedia, a project led by Carmen-Helena Téllez, with a base in Chicago, and dedicated to the interaction of music with other arts, scholarship, technology and human concerns.
We look forward to sharing AQUAVA’s new projects in the next few months and years!
Carmen, Cary and Alain.
