“Su mirada ciega, el diminuto disco de oro inexpresivo y sin embargo terriblemente lúcido, me penetraba como un mensaje: «Sálvanos, sálvanos».”
Axolotl, Julio Cortázar.
“Their blind gaze, the diminutive gold disc without expression and nonetheless terribly shining, went through me like a message: «Save us, save us».“ Axolotl, Julio Cortázar. 

Based on Julio Cortázar’s short story, Ahora soy un Axolotl is a piece that tries to capture my interpretation of the story: uncertainty, chaos, confusion, and at the same time, the quiet and isolated behavior of the beautiful underwater salamander; native to the freshwater in the Valley of Mexico. Lastly, the bond between the Axolotl and the man, and their journey to become one. 
This piece was composed using three analog synthesizers and digital audio processing.

Ahora soy un Axolotl (2022)

While hiking in Los Dinamos, a National park located in the South of Mexico City, I realized that a bee kept following me. In the beginning, I found myself annoyed by her, but then I realized it was my instinct that made me annoyed. If I paid attention, I would realize that she was harmless; she was just minding her own business; she was fragile and beautiful. I was following her. Finally, she landed on a flower, and carefully, I started to record her. Reading about the life cycle of a queen bee and its larva, I wanted to create a piece that captures the fascinating journey of the selection process of a queen. I created my material by exploring all the different sounds from an accordion in addition to the creation of sounds using the analog synthesizer’s sequencer."

As part of the second annual 40.4 Festival, an audio-forward intermedia sonic summit, Abejas was premiered in the 40.4 multichannel system of the B2 Center for Media, Arts, and Performance at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Abejas, Third Order Ambisonics (binaural version)

Performed by Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble and Band Sinfónica CECAMBA in Puebla, México.

Reencuentro - for Concert Band

Funeral for a Whale developed from my curiosity regarding the funeral practices of whales and other marine mammals, some of whom carry their deceased relative’s body for days as a manifestation of their mourning. Sometimes, whales and dolphins will even keep vigils around their deceased family members or companions. I found this at once so strange and uncanny, and yet also so immediately relatable as a communal expression of grief and loss. This piece imagines that space of grief and reflects on their ceremonies of remembrance. My goal when creating music is always to encourage reflection and imagination, not to be too overly prescriptive regarding what the music is really about. My hope is that Funeral for a Whale can reconcile my anxieties by offering some context for the piece as I was creating it, while still inviting listeners to weave together a story of their own.

Funeral For A Whale - (Stereo/Binaural Mix)

For fixed media, piano, vibraphone, electric guitar and saxophone. Recorded by Hypercube at Old Cabell Hall, Charlottesville, VA.

To Those Who Leave

Intento de Mambo is a piece inspired by my grandfather, whom I never had the chance to meet. I knew that my grandfather was an accomplished trombone player, performing with the renowned Pérez Prado band and playing iconic mambo music. However, in researching my family history, I made a surprising discovery—my grandfather was featured playing trombone in one of my all-time favorite music videos, El Triste by José José, from the II Festival de la Canción Latina. This was an unexpected revelation, as I was unaware of his appearance in this iconic Mexican cultural moment. According to my family, my grandfather’s musical legacy is the reason I was encouraged to pursue music. 

My piece, Intento de Mambo, is an attempt to compose a mambo that actually resulted in anything else but a mambo. This piece is my attempt to connect with and understand a person I never knew personally, but whose artistic life has unintentionally and profoundly shaped
my own professional life. 
Buy here -> https://valleywindspublishing.org/product/intento-de-mambo-by-natalia-quintanilla/

- Performed by The Valley Winds , Sweeney/Sage Hall at Smith College (November 2024)
- Performed by Dartmouth College Wind Ensemble, “Creating Space” concert, Dartmouth College (May 2024)

Intento de Mambo (2024) - for Wind Band

paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1istdcUvlvMD6aztbC9loyMeHX8xgto49/view?usp=sharing

link for more info: https://nataliaquintanilla.net/page-b

Versión 1 de “Inward Voices, Outward Struggles” explores gender-based violence in Mexico through a hybrid audio system (HADS).This system merges intimate binaural experiences through open-back headphones (egocentric, head-fixed sound fields) with shared speaker systems using Ambisonics (allocentric, room-fixed sound fields), creating an augmented immersive 3D audio experience.
The open-back headphones help represent the private, often hidden struggles of women. The speakers, in contrast, symbolize the public sphere that frequently overshadows or even denies these violences. By using open-back headphones that allow sound from the speakers to bleed through, I aim to depict the struggle between systemic violence and the private experiences of women that misogynistic structures try to silence.

Building on the feminist idea that “the private is political,” my project explores the schizophrenic dissonance of gendered bodies in Mexico assailed by constant violence amid a society that simultaneously denies their harrowing experience. To deepen this exploration, I use the individuality of headphones to create multiple versions of the piece. While the speaker array delivers the same audio to all listeners, the headphone audio varies, allowing a single performance to present different versions of the work. I therefore seek to use immersive audio and hybrid systems to inspire critical reflection through the contrast between individual bodily experiences and communal cacophony.

“[...] al cuerpo de Liliana. A la vida de Liliana. A la muerte de Liliana. ¿Cuántas veces al día murmura la palabra justicia? Uno nunca está más inerme que cuando no tiene lenguaje. ¿Quién, en ese verano de 1990, iba a poder decir, con la frente en alto, con la fuerza que da la convicción de lo correcto y de lo cierto, y la culpa no era de ella, ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía? ¿Quién en un mundo donde no existía la palabra feminicidio, las palabras terrorismo de pareja, podía decir lo que ahora digo sin la menor duda: la única diferencia entre mi hermana y yo es que yo nunca me topé con un asesino? 

La única diferencia entre ella y tú.”

— El invencible verano de Liliana, Cristina Rivera Garza

“[...]To Liliana’s body. To Liliana’s life. To Liliana’s death. How many times a day does one murmur the word justice? One is never more defenseless than when one has no language. Who, in that summer of 1990, could have said, with their head held high, with the strength that comes from the conviction of what is right and true, it wasn’t her fault, nor where she was, nor how she dressed? Who, in a world where the word femicide didn’t exist, where the words partner terrorism didn’t exist, could say what I now say without the slightest doubt: the only difference between my sister and me is that I never crossed paths with a murderer?” 

The only difference between her and you.”

— Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Cristina Rivera Garza
 


A Loana y a Lliana.

Voces Internas, Luchas Externas (Versión 1) | for Hybrid Audio Diffusion System, Binaural Version

paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1istdcUvlvMD6aztbC9loyMeHX8xgto49/view?usp=sharing

link for more info: https://nataliaquintanilla.net/page-b

Versión 2 de “Inward Voices, Outward Struggles” explores gender-based violence in Mexico through a hybrid audio system (HADS).This system merges intimate binaural experiences through open-back headphones (egocentric, head-fixed sound fields) with shared speaker systems using Ambisonics (allocentric, room-fixed sound fields), creating an augmented immersive 3D audio experience.

The open-back headphones help represent the private, often hidden struggles of women. The speakers, in contrast, symbolize the public sphere that frequently overshadows or even denies these violences. By using open-back headphones that allow sound from the speakers to bleed through, I aim to depict the struggle between systemic violence and the private experiences of women that misogynistic structures try to silence.

Building on the feminist idea that “the private is political,” my project explores the schizophrenic dissonance of gendered bodies in Mexico assailed by constant violence amid a society that simultaneously denies their harrowing experience. To deepen this exploration, I use the individuality of headphones to create multiple versions of the piece. While the speaker array delivers the same audio to all listeners, the headphone audio varies, allowing a single performance to present different versions of the work. I therefore seek to use immersive audio and hybrid systems to inspire critical reflection through the contrast between individual bodily experiences and communal cacophony.

“[...] al cuerpo de Liliana. A la vida de Liliana. A la muerte de Liliana. ¿Cuántas veces al día murmura la palabra justicia? Uno nunca está más inerme que cuando no tiene lenguaje. ¿Quién, en ese verano de 1990, iba a poder decir, con la frente en alto, con la fuerza que da la convicción de lo correcto y de lo cierto, y la culpa no era de ella, ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía? ¿Quién en un mundo donde no existía la palabra feminicidio, las palabras terrorismo de pareja, podía decir lo que ahora digo sin la menor duda: la única diferencia entre mi hermana y yo es que yo nunca me topé con un asesino?

La única diferencia entre ella y tú.”

— El invencible verano de Liliana, Cristina Rivera Garza

“[...]To Liliana’s body. To Liliana’s life. To Liliana’s death. How many times a day does one murmur the word justice? One is never more defenseless than when one has no language. Who, in that summer of 1990, could have said, with their head held high, with the strength that comes from the conviction of what is right and true, it wasn’t her fault, nor where she was, nor how she dressed? Who, in a world where the word femicide didn’t exist, where the words partner terrorism didn’t exist, could say what I now say without the slightest doubt: the only difference between my sister and me is that I never crossed paths with a murderer?”

The only difference between her and you.”

— Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Cristina Rivera Garza

A Loana y a Lliana.

Voces Internas, Luchas Externas (Versión 2) | For Hybrid Audio Diffusion System, Binaural Version

paper: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1istdcUvlvMD6aztbC9loyMeHX8xgto49/view?usp=sharing

link for more info: https://nataliaquintanilla.net/page-b

Versión 3 de “Inward Voices, Outward Struggles” explores gender-based violence in Mexico through a hybrid audio system (HADS).This system merges intimate binaural experiences through open-back headphones (egocentric, head-fixed sound fields) with shared speaker systems using Ambisonics (allocentric, room-fixed sound fields), creating an augmented immersive 3D audio experience.
The open-back headphones help represent the private, often hidden struggles of women. The speakers, in contrast, symbolize the public sphere that frequently overshadows or even denies these violences. By using open-back headphones that allow sound from the speakers to bleed through, I aim to depict the struggle between systemic violence and the private experiences of women that misogynistic structures try to silence.

Building on the feminist idea that “the private is political,” my project explores the schizophrenic dissonance of gendered bodies in Mexico assailed by constant violence amid a society that simultaneously denies their harrowing experience. To deepen this exploration, I use the individuality of headphones to create multiple versions of the piece. While the speaker array delivers the same audio to all listeners, the headphone audio varies, allowing a single performance to present different versions of the work. I therefore seek to use immersive audio and hybrid systems to inspire critical reflection through the contrast between individual bodily experiences and communal cacophony.

“[...] al cuerpo de Liliana. A la vida de Liliana. A la muerte de Liliana. ¿Cuántas veces al día murmura la palabra justicia? Uno nunca está más inerme que cuando no tiene lenguaje. ¿Quién, en ese verano de 1990, iba a poder decir, con la frente en alto, con la fuerza que da la convicción de lo correcto y de lo cierto, y la culpa no era de ella, ni dónde estaba ni cómo vestía? ¿Quién en un mundo donde no existía la palabra feminicidio, las palabras terrorismo de pareja, podía decir lo que ahora digo sin la menor duda: la única diferencia entre mi hermana y yo es que yo nunca me topé con un asesino?

La única diferencia entre ella y tú.”

— El invencible verano de Liliana, Cristina Rivera Garza

“[...]To Liliana’s body. To Liliana’s life. To Liliana’s death. How many times a day does one murmur the word justice? One is never more defenseless than when one has no language. Who, in that summer of 1990, could have said, with their head held high, with the strength that comes from the conviction of what is right and true, it wasn’t her fault, nor where she was, nor how she dressed? Who, in a world where the word femicide didn’t exist, where the words partner terrorism didn’t exist, could say what I now say without the slightest doubt: the only difference between my sister and me is that I never crossed paths with a murderer?”

The only difference between her and you.”

— Liliana’s Invincible Summer, Cristina Rivera Garza

A Loana y a Lliana.

Voces Internas, Luchas Externas (Versión 3) | for Hybrid Audio Diffusion (HADS), Binaural Version

Recorded with the Neumann KU 100 Binaural Dummy Head Microphone by Emelia Piane at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 

Program Notes: 

menos que nada (less than nothing) is a meditation on absence.

After reading Cristina Rivera Garza’s essay On 2501 Migrants by Alejandro Santiago, I turned to my accordion to explore how sound might express the lingering presence of what is no longer here.
The piece was shaped by Santiago’s installation of 2,501 life-sized clay sculptures. Each figure stands in place of someone who left his village in Oaxaca, Mexico. When Santiago returned home after years abroad,
he found it transformed: empty houses, silent streets. His response was to symbolically repopulate the space, giving form to the departed. The sculptures bear cracks, textures, and marks—
traces of the people they represent.

My piece extends this meditation on absence in different forms: the emptiness left behind by those
who migrate, the loss of those who are gone forever, and the spaces that continue to hold their
memory. As someone who has lived far from home, I’ve felt the lifelessness of places once
full, now quiet—where presence lingers only in memory.

The title, menos que nada, reflects how absence is not silent, but loud—how what is
no longer here can take up space in everyday life. It is a silence that speaks, one that grows
louder than sound.

This piece lives with that silence. It does not try to resolve it. Instead, it honors it. It
traces how loss, even when invisible, continues to shape us—how absence can
become a repository of memory, and how that memory, in turn, becomes a presence.


menos que nada | for Accordion and Live Electronics

Had the chance to see him play live and still he has a great voice and strong presence on stage. This Latin Soul tune initialy out in 1967 was recorded several times in different versions since then. Hope you will enjoy this revitalized "Ordinary Guy "

Ahora soy un Axolotl (2022)

Natalia Quintanilla

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