Luis Julio Toro

Molly Barth

Ricardo Lorenz receives commission from the University of Oregon to compose work for two world-renown flutists: Grammy-Award winning, University of Oregon faculty Molly Barth and revered Venezuelan flutist Luis Julio Toro.   In addition to having long standing solo careers, Molly Barth is a founding member of the nationally acclaimed sextet Eight Blackbird and Luis Julio Toro has traveled all around the world with his virtuoso contemporary folk ensemble Gurrufio. Lorenz and Toro have collaborated many times in the past.   They both met Molly Barth for the first time in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the 2007 National Flute Association’s convention where a new trio by the composer (a NFA commission) was premiered.  Lorenz’s new commissioned work is scheduled to receive North and South American premieres by the recently formed duo during the 2010-2011 season.

Read about Molly Barth

Read about Luis Julio Toro

One of several artist studios at the MacDowell Colony

Ricardo Lorenz will spend five weeks in residency at the MacDowell Colony in Peterborough, New Hampshire.  As a MacDowell Colony Fellow, Lorenz will work during April and May 2010 on a new concerto for viola and orchestra.  The concerto is loosely based on a group of songs by the late singer songwriter Victor Jara, one of the first casualties of Chile’s 1973 military coup.  Lorenz is composing this concerto for Roberto Díaz, former principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra and current President of the Curtis Institute of Music.

Founded by composer Edward MacDowell and his wife Marian in 1907, MacDowell Colony is the oldest and most prestigious artist residency in the U.S.    Writers, poets, playwrights, visual artists, and composers are supported during four to eight weeks while in residence at the MacDowell Colony.  Among the many works created at the colony are Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, Aaron Copland’s ballet Billy the Kid, and Leonard Bernstein’s multi-genre cantata Mass. Over 61 works done at the Colony have been awarded Pulitzer Prizes over the past one hundred years.

Link to the Library of Congress online exhibit
“A Century of Creativity: The MacDowell Colony 1907-2007”