Biography

Since 2005, Liz Angela García has been a full-time violin professor at the Music School of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Besides her violin and chamber music teaching activities, she’s had a keen interest in Latin American Music. In 2010 together with some colleagues founded Cuarteto Q-Arte, with whom started focusing on research, performance and disseminating quartet music produced in the continent. Q-Arte was nominated for a Grammy Award (2020), and for the Innovation Award at Classical:NEXT (2017) by virtue  of his transdisciplinary approach as well as for their interest in experimentation with different musical practices. Liz Angela García began her musical studies at the Music Conservatory of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, completing them with Antonia Kapitanova in 1991. She continued post-graduate and pedagogical studies at the Richard-Strauss Conservatory in Munich (1991-1996) and at the Johannes-Gutenberg University in Mainz (1996-1999). Her teachers included Valery Gradow, Denes Zsigmondy and Anne Shih. She took part in master classes with Stefano Gheorgiu (Rumania), Lyana Issakadze (Georgia), among others. In 2003 she traveled to Fort Worth, Texas (USA), where she earned her Master’s degree in violin performance with Curt Thompson and Michael Shih. Throughout her career she has performed as soloist with some of the most important orchestras in Colombia, as well as Sinfónica del Ecuador, Hungarian Radio Orchestra and Georgia Chamber Orchestra. In addition to that, she was a member of the Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá (1989-1991), the Philharmonie der Nationen (1996-1998), and the Orquesta do Norte-Portugal (1998), as well as the Orquesta Sinfónica de Colombia, where she served as Assistant and Principal Concertmaster (2001-2003).

The project "Artistic creation inspired by poetics and traditional performative practices of violins from four Andean countries" proposes the reconfiguration of a contemporary repertoire for violin and chamber music, inspired by the exploration of poetic and performative elements of the traditions in which the violin takes part in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.

Based on the importance of the sense of belonging as a factor in motivation (López-Iñiguez and Benett, 2012), and that the “interaction between the individual environment and the practices” (Dalagna et al, 2021, p.4) can be a driving force in artistic life, I would like, in addition to continue to investigate the local written repertoire, go further and explore other traditional musical practices where the violin is included in our countries; experiencing and learning them from a holistic and alternative perspective, and integrating them in a critical, reflective, and empathetic way in my way of interpreting  the instrument.

Being aware that many of these performative practices configure the identity, the collective imagination and the feelings of many communities, through this proposal I would like to help to create links between some traditions close to my place of origin in which the violin plays an important role and contemporary music language. Re-reading the works by composers from the region, collaborating with composers, interacting with other artists; and experimenting with alternative ways in which the instrument can be used, I aspire to share this repertoire with the general public through an experiential performance inspired by the imaginary of these traditional instruments. By means of this ethnographically informed artistic creation, I hope that, as Assis (2018) says, it will be possible to “dissolve parts of the past, and suggest a productive future” (p.195), with the purpose of posing novel and reflective musical interpretations.