inti figgis

premiered by the National Sawdust Ensemble @ National Sawdust on June 4th, 2019- as one of the winners of their 2019 Hildegard Competition.

Lidiya Yankovskaya, Conductor
Allison Loggins-Hull, flute
Oran Etkin, clarinet
Sugar Vendil, piano
Ian Rosenbaum, percussion
Miranda Cuckson, violin
Jeffrey Zeigler, cello

Charles Hagaman, NS Technician

Openwork, knotted object // Trellis in bloom // lightning ache [2019] | National Sawdust Ensemble

note| Primavera crown is an encounter between conflicting ethics of my work — the role of individual imagination and expressive possibility against the large canvas of chamber orchestra. The work brings into conversation aesthetic materials across different contemporary classical practices and places them within a liberatory framework, drawn from the socioeconomic realities of racialized spaces. Do these materials have the capacity to grow beyond their dominant origins?

The result opens a space for confrontation: on the one hand, its expressive sonic spaces and trajectories profoundly engage my imagination; on the other I struggle, from a philosophical perspective, with the mechanisms and aesthetics I’m invoking and their connotations. 

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premiered by Alarm Will Sound on July 27th, 2019 @ The Missouri Theatre during the Mizzou International Composer's Festival

flower by Ella Joklik

20190727B - 8 World Premieres

Primavera crown [2019] | Alarm Will Sound

for 3 percussionists - <2x woodblock, 3x flower pot, 2x non-resonating metal, 2x resonating metal, 3x glass bottle>/player

-this piece channels creation myths-

performed by the Mizzou Percussion Department @ Mizzou International Composer's Festival 2019 - Megan Arns, Hannah Hutchins, and Brianna Trainor

photo by Dale Lloyd

To give you form and breath [2019] | Mizzou Percussion

written for & premiered by Spektral Quartet at the Taproot New Music Festival @ UC Davis | 01.31.2020

Talamh (land) comes from old Irish and is one of the three fundamental spaces of their cosmology: nem-talamh-muir : the sky, the earth, the sea. This work explores distinct and connected sonic landscapes, using structure and ensemble interactivity to foreground individual choices in pitch, registration, and timbre. It’s a way for me to connect to home and recall many of the rich and magical mountains, streams, and forests I walked through with my papa, Peter, in Ireland since very young.

Talamh (land) [2020]| Spektral Quartet

'Form the Fabric' derives from NMAI archaeologist Ramiro Mato's phrase describing the cosmological understandings of the Incan & Andean peoples through description of the Inca Road as 'threads interwoven to form the fabric of the physical and spiritual world.

commissioned by Crash Ensemble and New Music Dublin with funds from the Arts Council of Ireland 2020

premiered by Crash Ensemble during New Music Dublin 2020 @ The National Concert Hall, Dublin Ireland

Form the Fabric [2020] | Crash Ensemble

[piece title] [year written] | [performing ensemble]

inti figgis-vizueta (b.1993) is a composer and educator who works to reconcile historical aesthetics and experimental practices with trans & Indigenous futures. Described as a “rising new music star” (LA Times), with “smooth and serrated melodies” (New York Times) and an “intriguing…highly integrated sound” (Gramophone), “wrought from a language we’d do well to learn” (Washington Post), inti has been commissioned and performed by leading artists including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Phoenix Symphony, Oregon Symphony, Dallas Symphony, American Composers Orchestra, New World Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Ensemble Reflektor, Aspen Music Festival, Ojai Music Festival, Spoleto Music Festival, Kennedy Center’s Sounds of US Festival, International Contemporary Ensemble, Alarm Will Sound, Wild Up, Roomful of Teeth, Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect, Kronos Quartet, Attacca Quartet, JACK Quartet, Music from Copland House, Crash Ensemble, violinist Jennifer Koh, and cellists Andrew Yee and Jay Campbell, among many others. inti’s work has been featured at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Kennedy Center, Walt Disney Hall Concert Hall, Symphony Center, REDCAT, National Concert Hall (IE), Southbank Centre (UK), Philharmonie de Paris (FR), Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (NL), and Konzerthaus Berlin (DE). 

Upcoming projects include Earths to Come in VR for the Venice Film Festival, mad scramble for crumbs for Opera Saratoga, Metahaven’s film The Feeling Sonnets, and works for flutist Claire Chase, pianist James McVinnie, and cellist Andrew Yee with Roomful of Teeth. inti is the recipient of the Lotos Foundation Prize, ASCAP Foundation Fred Ho Award, National Sawdust Hildegard Award, Café Royal Foundation Music Grant and residency fellowships from Dumbarton Oaks, Civitella Ranieri, Juilliard Summer Percussion, and Music at Copland House.

inti has held faculty positions with Luna Composition Lab (21-24’), Wildflower Composers (20-22’), Fresh Inc Festival (22’), and Atlanticx Composition (21’). She regularly lectures on her music with recent visits to Harvard University, The Juilliard School, Peabody Conservatory, and CalArts, among many others. inti has curated programs for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Green Umbrella series, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra Current Series, Wild Up’s Darkness Sounding, and American Composers Orchestra SONiC Festival. She is the 2024 Robert M. Trotter Lecturer for the College Music Society 67th National Conference. 
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inti studied with Marcos Balter, Felipe Lara, Donnacha Dennehy, and George Lewis. Her mentors include ﻿Tania León﻿, Nico Muhly, Angélica Negrón, Derek Bermel, and Andrew Norman, among many others. inti honors her Quichua bisabuela who was the only woman butcher on the plaza central and used to fight men with a machete.