Biography
Manuel Contreras Vázquez is a Chilean–Spanish composer based in Italy. He served as composer-in-residence for the Spanish Academy in Rome, the Center Les Récollets – Institut Français in Paris, the Cinenomada Foundation in Bolivia, and the Kone Foundation in Finland. Awards and fellowships include the Ernst von Siemens Foundation commissions program, the Turing Scheme of the UK, the Alban Program of the European Union, the Ibermúsicas Program, the Italian Government, the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation (AECID), the Castiglioni Prize in Milan, and Chilean prizes Luis Advis for orchestral works and Pulsar for the best artist of classical music in the country.
Several orchestras and ensembles performed his music, such as the International Contemporary Ensemble (New York), Plus-Minus (London), Modern Akademie (Frankfurt am Main), Iberoamericano (Weimar); La Serena Symphony, Taller de Música Contemporánea and Ensamble Contemporáneo (Santiago); Lallement-Marques duo (Paris); Algoritmo Ensemble (Rome), and VirgoVox Ensemble (Milan), including world-class soloists as Mario Caroli, Diego Castro, José Luis Urquieta, Paola Muñoz and Michael Nicolas. Major venues include festivals such as Wittener Tage of Germany, Mixtur of Barcelona, La Nuit d’Atempo of Paris, Expresiones Contemporáneas of México, Via Stellae of Santiago de Compostela, de Música Contemporánea de Córdoba, La Voce ed il Tempo of Genoa, among others. His interdisciplinary projects involve exhibitions and performances in La Paz, Guatemala City, Milan, Madrid, New York, Huddersfield, and Santo Domingo. His works appear on CDs and DVDs in Chile and Italy, while his scores are available in Universal Edition, SZ Sugar, Sconfinarte, and Babel Scores. As lecturer, he has received several invitations to international conferences in Chile, the UK, France, Spain, Bolivia, Germany and Italy.
Manuel holds a PhD in Composition from the University of Huddersfield (UK). He also studied at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, the Milan Conservatory, and the Santa Cecilia’s Academy. His teachers were Alejandro Guarello, Pablo Aranda, Alessandro Solbitati, Gabriele Manca, Ivan Fedele, Bryn Harrison, and Aaron Cassidy. In 2025, Manuel is working on his second monographic CD with KAIROS (Vienna) and on a new interdisciplinary project commissioned by CIMA centre and the Ernst von Siemens Foundation. Furthermore, he will serve as composer in residence at Casa degli Artisti in Milan. Manuel is director of master's thesis at the International University of Valencia and is external obserber for EIT Culture & Creativity think tank of the European Union.
Subtexto Producciones
Simone Tacconelli
Instrumental Producciones
Contreras at Molino di Mora Bassa. Vigevano, Nov. 2024. Photo by Laura Agnello.
About the music
Contreras Vázquez’s recent practices are the result of extensive artistic research that ranges from the use of phonetics to the aesthetic approaches linked to the notion of space that inspired his recent works and, at the same time, incorporates rigorous explorations on the use of sonic resources of instruments, voices and their multiple combinations. This investigative attitude has also allowed the Chilean-Spanish composer to venture into forces that integrate the conventional notion of concert with theatre, sound installation, lutherie and improvisation, all articulated by a very refined development of musical notation, a particularly significant quality that Contreras Vázquez confers to his scores.
The composer has the virtue of systematically recontextualizing the (at first sight) extra-musical elements that he explores and wishes to highlight until putting into crisis the relationship between organized sound and meaning. The composer’s poetics imaginatively hovers around the borders between sound and message, both categories that result from a sensitive and conscious treatment understood as materials that intertwine or emerge as structural reliefs over the extensive duration of his works. Until now, his profile as an artist-researcher has led him to undertake projects whose outcomes are musical scores, concerts, performances, recordings, videos, CDs, conferences, and articles addressed to reflecting on his practice in relationship with contemporary aesthetical approaches and with particular focus on the Chilean panorama and Latin-American issues linked to interculturality, politics, and the Global South. Relevant examples with remarkable impact in this field are “Moebius, a chamber opera on immigration” (2016), funded by the governments of Chile, Spain, and Italy; and “Aswalaq, Zoos Humanos” (2018), a voice theatre that combines the rituality of South American First Nations, linguists studies on endangered languages, and dramaturgical approaches to develop timbral explorations focused on the human zoos that emerged in Europe around 1830.
Cristián Morales
Composer and Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
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