by Dr. Enrique Lamadrid

For more than four centuries, Hallowtide rituals brought by Franciscan missionaries have been observed in New Mexico. The three day celebration includes All Hallows' Eve on October 31, All Hallowmas or All Saints Day on November 1, and All Souls Day on November 2. Only the second, Todos Santos, is a day of Holy Obligation when a special Mass was said for all the saints and martyrs known and unknown. The first and third are steeped in folk celebrations, including feasting, visiting graves, leaving food for the dead, and ritual begging.

As early as 1917, anthropologist Elsie Clews Parsons published her observations of these feasts at Zuni Pueblo. She was intrigued by what seemed to be a sacred incantation with magical words that didn't seem to be in the Zuni language:

The next year her colleague Aurelio Espinosa, New Mexico's first folklorist and linguist offered an explanation of her findings. He said that the incantation was a phonological adaptation of the Spanish invocation used when people made the sign of the Cross.

Espinosa also observed the way Zuni children would make the rounds of the houses in the Pueblo begging for treats like sweets, fruit, or bizcochitos, shouting:

The complete New Mexican Spanish invocation is also used on Christmas Day by the kids:

Modern day Americans will immediately recognize the connection to the "Trick or Treat" threats used on Halloween.

Old Timers in Nuevo México can recall the Masses and customs for Día de Todos Santos. Families would remember their loved ones with a special meal and a visit to the graves of the Campo Santo. Many Pueblos were closed to the public for that feast, which also included cemetery visits and altars of food in the homes of the recently departed. It was a quiet time of reflection and remembrance.

Some of us are old enough to remember when the Mesoamerican style "Day of the Dead" celebrations were introduced to the US Mexico Borderlands, with ofrendas or altars for the dead festooned with marigolds, sugar skulls, pan de muertos (bread for the dead), photos, satirical poems, and more. By the late 1980s, Mexican educators noticed the incursion of commercial US Halloween paraphernalia and countered by introducing their own ancient and colorful customs and foodways. In central Mexico, cultural organizations like the state networks of Casas de Cultura transformed what were private celebrations into tourist attractions with all their benefits. Prizes were offered for the best decorations and local crafts.

Before my many visits to Mexico City and Michoacán, the first ofrendas I saw were in Juárez at the Río Grande Mall, where Saturday crowds gathered for the spectacle. Within a few years, bilingual education programs in New Mexico followed suit, and soon there were Marigold parades in the street. The only thing missing up north are the performances of the folk version of Don Juan Tenorio, satirical plays based on the classical drama of José Zorrilla in 1844, and from the Spanish Golden Age playwright Tirso Molina's Burlador de Sevilla... All of them feature the licentious prodigy Don Juan, his love interests, and his pact with the Devil.

Culture and music know no borders and continue to evolve and adapt all around us. I would remind us that "Day of the Dead" in its morbid English translation is not exactly the point. Traditionally we honor the Ánimas Benditas, the Blessed Souls who may have left us, but who continue to inspire us.

Our Honor Roll

John Donald Robb followed his star to New Mexico in 1949 and began an illustrious career of teaching, field work, and composing that touched all of our lives. The musicians, educators, archivists, and composers of the John Donald Robb Musical Trust can be likened to a Gremio, a Guild of professionals, friends, and fans. In a time of remembrance and ofrendas or altars for the departed, we honor those who have worked together over the years, and the list is long. It includes members of the Robb Trust:

Professor Robb would insist on including the Nuevomexicano, Pueblo, and Southwestern performers that he recorded and worked with for many decades. Here are just a few, from Robb's personal photographs housed in the John Donald Robb Archive of Southwestern Music at the Center for Southwest Research and Special Collections on the first floor of the Zimmerman Library at the University of New Mexico:

In our history of Música del Corazón and music of the Southwest, we also honor:

Raven Chacon is a composer, performer and installation artist from Fort Defiance, Navajo Nation. As a solo artist, Chacon has exhibited, performed, or had works performed at LACMA, The Renaissance Society, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Borealis Festival, SITE Santa Fe, Chaco Canyon, Ende Tymes Festival, and Swiss Institute Contemporary Art New York. As a member of Postcommodity from 2009-2018, he co-created artworks presented at the Whitney Biennial, documenta 14, Carnegie International 57, as well as the 2-mile long land art installation Repellent Fence.

A recording artist over the span of 24 years, Chacon has appeared on more than eighty releases on various national and international labels. In 2022, he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in Music for his composition Voiceless Mass. His 2020 Manifest Destiny opera Sweet Land, co-composed with Du Yun, received critical acclaim from The LA Times, The New York Times, and The New Yorker, and was named 2021 Opera of the Year by the Music Critics Association of North America.

Since 2004, he has mentored over 300 high school Native composers in the writing of new string quartets for the Native American Composer Apprenticeship Project (NACAP). Chacon is the recipient of the United States Artists fellowship in Music, The Creative Capital award in Visual Arts, The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation artist fellowship, the American Academy’s Berlin Prize for Music Composition, the Bemis Center’s Ree Kaneko Award, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (2022), the Pew Fellow-in-Residence (2022), and is a 2023 MacArthur Fellow.

His solo artworks are in the collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s American Art Museum and National Museum of the American Indian, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Getty Research Institute, the University of New Mexico Art Museum, and various private collections.

World Premiere

Tiguex, for the entire city of Albuquerque (2025), composed by Pulitzer Prize-winning, Albuquerque-based composer Raven Chacon, is a large-scale musical composition consisting of twenty overlapping movements performed over the span of a day.

The performance took place September 27th, 2025, from dawn to dusk, across the city of Albuquerque.

learn more about Tiguex

Artistic Example

Video: Present Music premieres Raven Chacon's 2022 Pulitzer Prize-winning composition "Voiceless Mass" on November 21st, 2021 at The Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist in Milwaukee. Present Music, along with the Wisconsin Conference of the United Church of Christ and Plymouth Church UCC, commissioned "Voiceless Mass" by Raven Chacon for the 40th season of their concert series. “Voiceless Mass” is scored for organ, flute, clarinet, bass clarinet, two percussionists, strings and sine tones. Raven Chacon writes: "This work considers the spaces in which we gather, the history of access of these spaces, and the land upon which these buildings sit. Though ‘mass’ is referenced in the title, the piece contains no audible singing voices, instead using the openness of the large space to intone the constricted intervals of the wind and string instruments. In exploiting the architecture of the cathedral,  Voiceless Mass considers the futility of giving voice to the voiceless, when ceding space is never an option for those in power." See more about Present Music at www.PresentMusic.org.

Remarks of John Donald Robb to the students of the Hummingbird Music Camp and their parents and teachers, circa 1965.

Boys and Girls, Parents and Guests:

The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament showeth his handiwork. Day unto day uttereth speech and night unto night showeth knowledge. Psalm 19.

Life is full of wonder. The wonder of life and nature comes to us through our five senses.

Touch – through the skin
Taste – through the tongue
Smell – through the nose
Sight – through the eyes
Sound – through the ears

With these we discover all that we know about the world.

Anyone who is born without the sixth sense, the sense of wonder, is unfortunate. Anyone born with it possesses riches which nothing can take away.

Can you see seas and islands floating in the sunset sky?
Can you see statues and profiles in the rocky cliffs?
If you can, you have this sense of wonder: don’t ever lose it!
The wonders which we see through the eyes have been greatly increased by two eye aids: 
The telescope which brings things closer.
The microscope which shows us things too tiny for our own eyes.
Wonder is the beginning of learning.  But learning is not enough.  You must:
Acquire learning. 
Use it.

The boy or girl who is awake to these wonders, learns to understand them (at least in part), and then uses his learning for his own happiness and that of others – is like the man of the Bible says : he

“shall be like a tree planted by the river of waters, that bringeth forth fruit in its season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper.”

I think God manifests himself not only in Love and Wonder, but also in Beauty.  He is all three of these. If we seek Beauty we are seeking God.  If we are creating we are discovering God.

There is beauty – 

        In the sights that we see
        In the sounds that we hear

In the love that we feel and show for other living beings, animal or human.

There is even beauty in touch, taste and smell.
There is also ugliness if that is what we are looking for.
There is beauty in the touch of a hand – but ugliness is in the touch of a hot stove.
There is beauty in the taste of apple pie – but ugliness in the taste of castor oil.
There is beauty in the perfume of a rose – but ugliness in the smell of a paper mill.

If you seek beauty, you will find happiness. If you seek ugliness, you will become ugly yourself, inside and probably outside.

But I want to talk about the fifth sense that I have mentioned – the sense of hearing – for while we have the other senses, we are all a special, lucky class of people.  We are all musicians.

When I retired in 1957, I took a year off and journeyed to about 20 countries, circling the whole world.

Everywhere I went, I found I had the finest passport because I was a musician, and everywhere I went, I sought out and met musicians.

I learned many lessons.  Let me tell you about some of them.

In India I met a Professor of Music in Madras at the University. He was glad to talk to me about music and the music of India in particular. I was so impressed with him that I went out and bought his book on India’s music. I learned that India’s music is basically religious. The usual concert piece starts with an invocation to God.

But in Sama Murti’s book I ran across this remarkable sentence:

“There are many pathways to God but the pathway of music is the most pleasant.”

Also in India, in Lucknow, I met a musician of the All India Radio. His name was Gora Sen. When I met hm he did not say “How do you do? I am glad to meet you”. He said, “I greet you in the name of Almighty God”. He was a flute player.

In the days when India was a colony of England, he used to be afraid of the fierce English Goras, as he called them, in the province of Bihar. Gora means fierce, but he said “I am Kala which means gentle”.

Then one day he listened outside the church where the English were having a church service, and he heard them singing “celestial” music as he called it. “What are they singing?” “Hymns,” he was told.  “What is a hymn?” “A prayer to God.” They answered. He was never afraid of them after that.

He told me how, in his youth, he used to hear the Banseri tribesmen playing beautiful music on the flute. Ban means forest and seri means beauty, so Banseri means ‘beauty of the forest’.

I have learned a good many languages.

I learned Latin and German in school.

I learned Chinese during a year (34 years ago), that I spent in China 

I learned French during a year (1947-48), that I spent in Paris.

I learned a little Italian and a little Russian.

I am now learning a new language call FORTRAN.

All these are languages to talk to human beings except FORTRAN. FORTRAN is a language which you can talk, (or at least write to computers) to a machine.  

Someday we will invent a language by which we can talk to birds and animals.

Meanwhile there is a language which is universal – the language of music.

It is your privilege here to learn this language.  The nice thing about it is that is not all hard work.  Especially when you play music with others.

So I will close by asking God to bless you in your studies here in your lovely music camp.

New Music Piano Recital
Emanuele Arciuli
Tuesday 21 October 2025 7:30pm
4 World Premieres
2 Robb Trust Commissions
Free Admission
a family-friendly community event

Composers
Lucas Stafford, Carlos Santiago Medina, Emilio Méndez Rizo, Jonah Elrod*, Jessi Harvey*, Kyle Gann, Louis W. Ballard

Keller Hall at Center for the Arts (CFA)
University of New Mexico
College of Fine Arts
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Directions

*Jessi Harvey and Jonah Elrod are recipients of the 2026 Robb Commission.

Artist Talk
Daniel Ward
Friday 6 December 2025 11am
Free Admission
a family-friendly
community event

Center for the Arts (CFA)
Room 1111
University of New Mexico
College of Fine Arts
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Directions

Artist Talk
Christopher Trapani
Friday 6 February 2026 11am
Free Admission
a family-friendly
community event

Center for the Arts (CFA)
Room 1111
University of New Mexico
College of Fine Arts
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Directions

Artist Residency
Trio Magnoliana
6-8 April 2026

featuring:
Mann-Wen Lo, violin
Eunghee Cho, cello
Andrew Staupe, piano

Monday 6 April 2026
Closed rehearsals with composers

Tuesday 7 April 2026
Closed rehearsals with composers

Wednesday 8 April 2026

3:30-5:00pm
Violin Masterclass CFA Rm 2100
Cello Masterclass Keller Hall

7:30pm
Annual Robb Concert
Featured Composers

• John Donald Robb
• Peter Gilbert
• Steven Block
• Nicky Sohn
• Emilio Méndez Rizo
• Roberto De León-Ortiz
• Lucas Stafford
• Carlos Santiago Medina

Center for the Arts (CFA)
University of New Mexico
College of Fine Arts
MSC04 2570
1 University of New Mexico
Albuquerque, NM 87131-0001
Directions

Artist Residency
the [Switch~ Ensemble]
4-6 May 2026 

Monday 4 May 2026 
Rehearsals with composers

Tuesday 5 May 2026 
Rehearsals with composers

Wednesday 6 May 2026 
4:00-5:00pm
Masterclasses

• Andrew Tholl violin CFA 2100
• TJ Borden cello Keller Hall
• Megan Arns percussion tba

7:30-9:00pm
Concert Free Admission
Keller Hall at Center for the Arts (CFA)
203 Cornell Dr, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Directions

54th Annual John Donald Robb Composers' Symposium Series
2025-2026 Season Finale
the [Switch~ Ensemble]
Wed 6 May 2026
7:30-9:00pm
6 World Premieres
7 New Mexico-based Composers
1 Visiting Composer-in-Residence
UNM Keller Hall free admission
203 Cornell Dr, Albuquerque, NM 87106
Directions

Program

All composers are in attendance at tonight's performance.

Roberto De León-Ortiz (b. 1994)
The rest is unrest 2026 *

Nicholas Daniel López (b. 1985)
Variations on a Lebanese Lullaby 2024; rev. 2026 *

Emilio Méndez Rizo (b. 1998)
Always Beginning 2026 *

Peter Gilbert & Karola Obermüller
in die Zeit vergangen
(eine Malina-Suite) 2026 *

intermission

Jason Thorpe Buchanan (b. 1986)
soliloquios del viento 2016; rev. 2017

Carlos Santiago Medina (b. 2003)
Homage to Lugosi and Bartók 2026 *

Kelly Feng // 冯重瑞 (b. 2002)
Glitch Refuses 2026 *

* world premiere

Program Notes

The rest is unrest
for mixed ensemble
Roberto De León-Ortiz (b. 1994)
world premiere

The music centers on a constant state of instability, where overlapping and interweaving lines move between stillness and varying degrees of motion, rarely settling together. Clear pitch is gradually pushed toward noise as part of a continuous shift. This constant sense of unrest drives the music forward.

Throughout, pitch material expands and contracts, stretching outward and folding back into itself. Moments of precise alignment only emerge as brief coloristic events rather than structural pivots.


Variations on a Lebanese Lullaby 
(2024 rev. 2026)
Nicholas Daniel López (b. 1985)
world premiere

Originally composed in the fall of 2024 amid escalating violence in Lebanon, this trio for piano, flute, and cello is a response to the mobile-device bombings whose signals and aftershocks permeate the score’s sonic field. At its core is a dialogue between Lebanese singer Fairuz’s “Yalla Tnam Reema” and Lebanon’s terrifying ambient soundscape of the time—tender lyric fragments suspended in horror. I updated the score’s gestures to reify the violence and ballistic concatenation that has returned to the Levant recently. The work’s first iteration was premiered May 2025 at Paul Hall in New York City. 


Always Beginning
Emilio Méndez Rizo (b. 1998) 
world premiere

I.   Prim
II.  Aloof
III. Gemas en la Casa de los Espejos
IV. Ritual Atónito 
V.  This River Shouldn't Be Here 
VI. ... y las ninfas se perdieron


in die Zeit vergangen (eine Malina-Suite)
Peter Gilbert & Karola Obermüller
world premiere

Ingeborg Bachmann’s landmark feminist novel Malina has occupied our last four years as we composed a 90-minute opera recently premiered in Germany of which this piece is a kind of echoing memory.  

1. heute.  The protagonist, a sensitive author, is overwhelmed by 1960s Vienna but also by troubling memories that arise causing confusion
2. erinnerung.  The (unnamed) protagonist navigates her life with a projected alter ego “Malina” with whom she debates philosophy and identity
3. sprung.  A hole in her wall seems to beckon from beyond and its siren song of fate mixes with voices from the author’s escapist fairy tale come to life.
4. abgewöhnen.  The author’s relationship with a single father brings her anxiety to a boiling point as does her complex feelings for his two children.  She ultimately chooses her artistic life over these attachments.
5. schlafen.  Throughout the novel we see her addiction to sleeping pills become a real problem as her projected alter ego becomes increasingly worried.
6. morgen. The final morning she awakens, as light pours through the apartment, we see that the hole in the wall has grown into a large fissure.
7. durch. The novel ends as the author chooses to go through the wall disappearing forever.  Malina remains behind.

soliloquios del viento
(2016; rev. 2017)
Jason Thorpe Buchanan (b. 1986)

soliloquios del viento was commissioned by Royaumont Académie Voix Nouvelles, written in August of 2016 and premiered by the Talea Ensemble & EXAUDI on September 9, 2016, conducted by James Baker. This fifteen-minute work is a meditation on eight poems of Pablo Neruda, reflecting love, distance, and despair. Six singers are set against eight instrumentalists whose fragile and often voiceless sonorities gently color and obscure the murmuring of the text and pointillistic vocal material. The Spanish text is predominantly unintelligible, with the content of Neruda's words instead conjured by the composite texture. He writes of two lovers, their romance characterized by abrasion – a rendezvous between two scorched, ascetic souls, who consume and destroy one another, entangled yet divided by both sublime transfiguration and inexorable chaos. The revised versions for sextet/septet and electronics was completed in 2017 for Ensemble Interface’s premiere at the 2017 VIPA Festival in Spain and the Hong Kong New Music Ensemble’s premiere at the 2019 TICF Academy and Festival in Thailand, respectively, redistributing vocal parts to the electronics and ensemble, alongside instrumental samples and other sources.

Neruda’s texts evoke not only the conflict between darkness and light in both persons, but through this lens, the experience of being confronted with the subjectivity of another’s consciousness. That otherness is manifest in lurid, destructive passions, revealing mutual incoherence, frailty, and sophism beyond endurance. Each poem seems to present discrete, parallel scenarios, some in which each person is awoken by their confrontation rather than destroyed – in others suffering to the point of intolerable anguish and desolation. Eroticism and sunderance run throughout Neruda’s powerful imagery, his lover depicted as an enemy with whom he pleads for voice – who has disgraced their love. For the poet, love is the sole means with which two people may “weather” one another. A source of both euphoria and utter devastation, there is a vastness that is evoked in his texts, an attempt to span immeasurable time and distance. Each braves the other, an intimacy and corrosive embrace that both breaks and absolves each person.


Homage to Lugosi and Bartók
Carlos Santiago Medina (b. 2003)
world premiere

Two Hungarian people have become heavy influences in my music and art. Bela Lugosi, the actor who played Count Dracula in the 1931 movie adaptation of Bram Stoker's novel Dracula, and Bela Bartók, the composer famous for his spiky aesthetic and musicological research. My homage is simply a love letter to both artists, and to the creations they have left behind for me to enjoy. 


Performers

the [Switch~ Ensemble] is

• Daria Binkowski, flutes 
• Michiko Ogawa, clarinets 
• Andrew Tholl, violin
• TJ Borden, cello 
• Megan Arns, percussion
• Mari Kawamura, piano 
• Wei-Han Wu, conductor 
• Jason Thorpe Buchanan, Artistic Director / electronics
  

Artistic Statement

A new music ensemble for the 21st Century, the [Switch~ Ensemble] is dedicated to the creation of new works for chamber ensemble: we bring bold new acoustic, electroacoustic, and multimedia projects to life. At the core of each performance is our commitment to the total integration of technology and live musicians. We strive for compelling artistry achieved through the seamless creation, production, and execution of new music, and believe that working directly with composers—in a medium where the score is a point of departure rather than a finish line—allows for new and thrilling musical possibilities.

[Switch~] contributes to the future of the genre by strongly advocating for and commissioning the music of a new generation of emerging young composers. We have enjoyed fruitful collaborations with both emerging and established composers, with commissions and premieres of works by composers including Anna-Louise Walton, Alican Çamci, Igor Santos, Katherine Young, Stefano Gervasoni, Stefan Prins, Wojtek Blecharz, Anthony Vine, Rand Steiger, Philippe Leroux, Timothy McCormack, Tonia Ko, James Bean, Matt Sargent, Marianthi Papalexandri-Alexandri, Esaias Järnegard, Sivan Eldar, Julio Zúñiga, Zeynep Toraman, Alexander Schubert, Adrien Trybucki, Elvira Garifzyanova, Santiago Diez-Fischer, Lisa Streich, Anthony Pateras, and many others.

Recent engagements include performances and residencies at Cornell, Bard College, University of Chicago, Ithaca College, Buffalo State, UC Berkeley,  the VIPA Festival (Spain), Eastman School of Music, and Avaloch Farms Music Institute, as well as concerts at the Image/Sound Festival, San Francisco Center for New Music, MATA Interval Series, NYCEMF, Vanguard New Music Series at Kent State University, the Queens New Music Festival, the CD release of Christopher Chandler’s Smoke and Mirrors on the SEAMUS label, and more.

2019-20 season highlights include a workshop and performance at UC San Diego for a new commission by Katharina Rosenberger; the premiere of her work at the DiMenna Center in New York City; a return engagement at Eastman Audio Research Studio; and residencies with Harvard Group for New Music, Miami’s Frost School of Music, and the SPLICE Institute.

Here's the [Switch~ Ensemble] performing the world premiere of Hard columns you within (2022) by Victoria Cheah, Chatham, New York, November 18, 2022. Laura Cocks-flutes, Madison Greenstone-clarinets, Lauren Cauley-violin, T.J. Borden-cello, Megan Arns-percussion, Jason Thorpe Buchanan-electronics, Audio and Video mixed and edited by Jason Thorpe Buchanan.

Roberto De León-Ortiz (b. 1994)

is a Mexican composer and pianist currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Composition and Collaborative Piano at the University of New Mexico, under the guidance of Dr. José-Luis Hurtado and Pamela Viktoria Pyle. 

His works have been premiered and recorded by performers such as the JACK Quartet, Laura Cocks, Ángel Flores, Ben Roidl-Ward, TRAMAS collective, Siqueiros Trio, Francisco Alcocer, and the University of Guanajuato Symphony Orchestra. He was a recipient of the 2020 PECDA grant (Artistic Creation and Development Funding Program, awarded by the government of Mexico), for which he composed a largescale work for piano and percussion, which he premiered as pianist.

Here is Roberto's composition "Bounce" selected piece of Sonit's Call for Scores 2020 for solo double bass, performed by Francisco Alcocer, produced by Enrique Mendoza, Jonathan Figueroa, and Axel Retif, May 2022. Visit Roberto's Soundcloud channel to hear more of his music. 

Nicholas Daniel López (b.1985)

is an emerging composer whose work lies at the intersection of culture and history. Drawing on his Hispanic heritage—alongside classical and cinematic traditions—he creates emotionally resonant works driven by a sense of inevitability and storytelling. López earned his Bachelor of Music in Composition as a Presidential Scholar from the USC Thornton School of Music and holds Certificates in Composition from The Juilliard School Extension Division and in Harmony & Counterpoint from the European American Musical Alliance at the Schola Cantorum in Paris.

A laureate of the Young Composer’s Competition in Barcelona for his setting of Federico García Lorca’s Romance de la pena negra, López continues to explore vivid, culturally informed sound worlds. He recently returned home to pursue dual Master of Music degrees in Theory & Composition and Musicology at UNM, integrating interdisciplinary research and studies in opera to explore the stories of his homeland.

Here's a performance of López's composition Grey Glass Panes performed by Cello Fourum: Marc Moskovitz, Peng Li, David Meyer, and Nathaniel Yaffe, Dec 2014. 

Emilio Méndez Rizo (b. 1998)

was born in Simi Valley, California. He moved to Mexico City, where he was raised, shortly after birth. He began his musical studies in 2006, playing piano and electric guitar. During his teenage years he delved into electronic music, taking a self-teaching approach, which, through an unexpected turn of events, by connecting an appeal for complex timbre and form, lead him to take on the world of academic concert music.

Shortly after beginning his undergraduate studies at the Escuela Superior de Música (ESM, INBAL, Mexico City) in 2018, he was selected, alongside fellow colleagues, to present a mixed-media work as part of the 25th anniversary celebrations of the Centro Nacional de las Artes (CENART). Following this performance, he was commissioned to compose a fanfare; however, the project was ultimately cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite this setback, the artistic relationships formed during the event led to several commissions from ensemble members, including a drum set concerto for the conductor’s graduation recital and a string quartet.

Driven by a deep commitment to collaboration and guided by a humane artistic vision, he has taken part in several interdisciplinary projects. Notably, he contributed to the award-winning independent film collective Desvaríos, composing for the short film Puertas (2022).

“Emi” has always looked for maximizing the emotional effects of music, whether it’s by mellow textures or blasted tones. Blending compositional techniques of total specificity with aleatoric processes and uncanny timbres through electronics, using his background in mathematics, he thrives in simplifying complex ideas into intuitive notation with a powerful emotional load.

Here is Realidades Entrelazadas 1 (Entangled Realities 1) Composition & Live Electronics by Emilio Méndez Rizo, Conducted by Adrián Gutiérrez de Llano, performed by Kandinsky Chamber Orchestra, Premiered 26 January 2020, Teatro nacional de las Artes, México. 

Karola Obermüller
Robb Composers' Symposium Series
Co-Artistic Director

Karola's composing, described by the New York Times as "hyperkinetic music”, is constantly in search of the unknown. After obtaining composition degrees in Nuremberg, Saarbrücken, and the University Mozarteum Salzburg, her sense of rhythm and form was forever changed by studying Carnatic and Hindustani classical music in Chennai and Delhi, India.

A Ph.D. at Harvard University brought her to the US where she taught at the University of New Mexico before joining the Department of Music at UC San Diego. She also lives and works part of the year in Europe and has been a visiting artist at ZKM, Deutsche Akademie Rom, Centro Tedesco di studi Veneziani, Akademie Schloss Solitude, Eisler House (International Hanns Eisler Scholarship), and IRCAM.

Her music, often political, always dramatic, includes operas for Staatstheater Nürnberg, Theater Bielefeld, Theater Bonn, Theater Heidelberg, Theater Aachen, and Stuttgart’s Musik der Jahrhunderte.  The emotional juxtapositions of story suspended in a tableau architecture that one finds in her operas can be heard in her concert works as well.  These include commissions from the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fromm Music Foundation, New Music USA, Bayerischer Rundfunk, Saarländischer Rundfunk, and numerous renowned soloists and ensembles. 

Her music can be heard on CD (WERGO, New Focus Recordings, Brilliant Classics, NEOS) and online at karolaobermueller.net.

Here is Karola Obermüller's Dehnung (2020) for daegeum, koto, gayageum, two violins, viola violoncello, double bass, and percussion performed by AsianArt Ensemble 15 May 2023, Konzerthaus Berlin. All rights reserved.

Jason Thorpe Buchanan (b.1986)

is a tri-continentally active composer, intermedia artist, and technologist. His works explore multiplicity, causality, behavior, and the integration of live performance with technology.

In 2025, he was appointed Professor für Komposition mit digitalen Medien at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany, and leads the graduate program in Komposition mit neuen Medien as director of the Zentrum für Intermediale Komposition (formerly Studio für experimentelle elektronische Musik).

He has been recognized internationally through fellowships and commissions from the Fulbright Foundation (to HfMT Hamburg, 2010-11), the American-Scandinavian Foundation, EMPAC (2025), Royaumont (France, 2016 & 2017), TIME SPANS (NYC), the Mizzou International Composers Festival (MICF, 2013), the International Horn Society, Eklekto Percussion (Switzerland), Tetractys New Music (Austin), Tzlil Meudcan, the Earle Brown Music Foundation, two ASCAP Morton Gould Awards (2014 & 2015), Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung, as winner of Iron Composer (2014), the Howard Hanson Orchestral Prize (2014) and more, including selection as Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet (Norway), the Embassy of Foreign Artists (Switzerland), the Brush Creek Foundation (Wyoming), nomination for the 2015 Gaudeamus Prize, as a 2024 Aaron Copland Bogliasco Fellow (Italy), and as a 2026 SWR EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO Fellow (Germany). Learn more about Jason.

Here's soliloquios del viento (2016; rev. 2017) by Jason Thorpe Buchanan, version for sextet and electronics, performed by the TACETi Ensemble at the TRANSIT Festival in Leuven, Belgium October 2019. 

Carlos Santiago Medina (b. 2003)

or Santi, as he likes to be called, is a guitarist and composer born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He currently studies at the University of New Mexico, working towards a bachelor's in music theory and composition. 

Alongside his college studies, Santi participates in the Albuquerque Composer Collective. A student organization that advocates for DIY (do it yourself) music projects, events, and collaborations.

Inspired by his metal phase in his teenage years, Santi fell in love with the post-tonal works of Leo Brouwer, Béla Bartók, and Arnold Schoenberg. Though his musical aesthetic reflects his punk and serialist influences, Santi would describe his style as “New Mexican”.

Here's a performance of Santi's work, Dos Poemas Del Paramo. His sister wrote the poems/lyrics which he set to music. The performers are New York City based loadbang, a mixed ensemble for voice, clarinet, trumpet, and trombone. Visit Santi's YouTube channel to hear more of his artistry.

Kelly Feng // 冯重瑞 (b. 2002)

(she/her/hers) is a composer and interdisciplinary artist whose works are a blend of electronic music, electroacoustic music, traditional concert music, and intermedia installations. She makes her own instruments and much of her works root in decolonial, feminist, and anti-authoritarian perspectives. Her artistic practice prioritizes community, human connection, DIY culture, and non-conformity towards systems of power. Outside of creating and composing, Kelly is also an enthusiastic performer and she enjoys collaborating with fellow musicians and artists on noise and art shows. 

Recipient of the 2024 Erickson Prize and the 2023 Dr. Milton H. Saier, Sr. Memorial Award, Kelly holds a Bachelor of Arts in Music and a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of California, San Diego, where she graduated summa cum laude. She is currently working on her Master’s degree in Theory and Composition from the University of New Mexico. Her teachers include Peter Gilbert, Stewart Copeland, Karola Obermueller, Rand Steiger, Chinary Ung, Lei Liang, and Marcos Balter. 

Kelly was born in Shenzhen, China, and was raised between Shenzhen and San Jose, California. Currently based in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she loves spending her weekends with dogs and cats at her local animal shelter. In an alternative universe, she would probably pursue a pet grooming / pet training career. 

Here is a performance of How Much of Me by Kelly Feng // 冯重瑞 performed by Jesse Tatum, at the Robb Electronica concert, Tuesday 4 February 2025, UNM ARTSLab. Recording and Video Editing by Kelly Feng. Special thanks to Peter Gilbert, Valery Estabrook, Sarah Bennett Davidson, and Stewart Copeland.

we are ROBBtrust
2024 ¡Música del Corazón! curator 
2025 underwriting recipient
Javier Marín-López

Working with the UNM John Donald Robb Musical Trust has been exceptionally enriching. Serving as co-curator of ¡Música del Corazón! in 2024, receiving support through the 2025 Underwriting Program, and working with the Robb Archives have provided unique opportunities for research, scholarly exchange, and public engagement. These experiences have deepened my understanding of the region’s rich musical heritage and its connections with the broader United States, Mexico, and Spain, while fostering meaningful collaborations that continue to shape and transform my work as a musicologist. ~ Dr. Javier Marín-López

More information about Javier is available at his Linktree. Here are his mid-term and final reports for his 2025 Robb Trust Underwriting project, Vestiges of Hispanic Colonial Music in the John Donald Robb Archive of Southwestern Music.

Learn more
Música del Corazón
Underwriting
Robb Archives

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2026 underwriting recipient
Mónica Sánchez
May 2026

MÓNICA SÁNCHEZ is a professional theatre artist. Over the past 40 years, she has honed the craft of professional actor; written plays and devised work for the stage; directed productions small and large; enjoyed a myriad of assignments as a teaching artist; and has facilitated numerous community engagements.She holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from the University of New Mexico and is a retired Professor of Playwriting and Performance at Colorado College, in Colorado Springs.

She began her theatre journey in her native New Mexico with La Compañía de Teatro de Alburquerque, before a 23-year residency in California where she would collaborate with El Teatro Campesino, Octavio Solís, Luís Alfaro, Culture Clash, the Latino Theatre Lab, South Coast Repertory, San Diego Repertory, Erik Ehn, Cornerstone Theatre, Shirley Jo Finney, Playwright's Arena, and Diane Rodriguez, among others. Television and Film credits include the roles of Dolores Huerta in The Glorias, House of Cards, and Primo, among others.

Her plays aspire to unveil the varied and underrepresented experiences of Latinidad in the U.S., particularly the complex and unique philosophical, cultural and historical milieu of the Southwest; not only ripe for dramatic exploration but also sorely missing from the canon of the American theatre. 

She currently resides in Albuquerque, NM where she continues her work in independent, professional, and community projects and is always keen to entertain collaborations near and far.

About "THE RIVER IS A SCAR THAT SOMETIMES BLEEDS WATER"

THE RIVER IS A SCAR THAT SOMETIMES BLEEDS WATER is the psycho-spiritual journey of "Negra", a Mestiz-Genizara-Chicana 21st Century war veteran returned to her ancestral homeland in the Southwest. Psychotropic plant medicine launches her odyssey through a ceremonial and multi-generational labyrinth where she must confront ancestral trauma and original wounds, making way for the ultimate transformation: her desire to live. Quintessential New Mexican topography, histories and rituals illuminate universal echoes of colonization, war, and climate crisis. This play is Negra’s “trip”.

The Robb Trust is providing funding for a workshop production of THE RIVER IS A SCAR THAT SOMETIMES BLEEDS WATER. A first staged reading of the play was recently conducted at the Albuquerque Museum to a standing room only audience. There was much interest in the performance. The general consensus was that the story spoke to the New Mexican experience, was of great significance, and needed to be told.

The workshop production is a step towards developing the play for a future, fully produced theatre event. The play encompasses a broad reach of New Mexican histories, customs, characters, and rituals. Traditional music and specific songs from the Robb collection are a vital element to completing the storytelling of this play’s narrative.

Sánchez's script has previously been supported by the Jackson Fellowship from Hulbert Center for Southwest Studies at Colorado College (2021), a micro-commission from The Alcove New Play Development at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in NYC (2023), and most recently from the City of Albuquerque’s Urban Enhancement Trust Fund’s (UETF) Resiliency Residency, in addition to production support from the Museum of Albuquerque for the Staged Reading that took place on 29 March 2026, in conjunction with the Delilah Montoya Retrospective: Activating Chicana Resistance.

Learn more about our annual underwriting.

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beloved longtime board member
Jim Bonnell (1939-2025)
July 2025

Jim was a longtime board member and past Chair of the Robb Trust. Here is his obituary as it was printed in the Albuquerque Journal. He is dearly missed by many. 

James E. (Jim) Bonnell, age 85 died on July 17, 2025. From pioneering Otero County families, Jim was born in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 22, 1939, to Charles E. Bonnell and Edith Ogle Bonnell.

After graduating from Alamogordo High School in 1957, Jim's education included a Masters in Music Education (plus 45 credit hours) which included a Certificate of Administration and Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of New Mexico. His graduate and post-graduate work, in addition to UNM, included Eastern New Mexico University, Western State College of Colorado, New Mexico State University, Eastman School of Music-University of Rochester, and Indiana University. He began his teaching career in Artesia, NM, where he met his lifelong beloved collaborator, Paula Diane Thompson, from Trumann, Arkansas. They were married in 1964 and recently celebrated their 61st anniversary.

After a career in New Mexico public schools in Artesia, Las Cruces, and Albuquerque which spanned almost thirty years, Mr. Bonnell retired in 1989 from Albuquerque Public Schools where he served in various positions including Instructor, District Specialist, District Coordinator, and District Director (Acting) of Music Education. In 1989, Mr. Bonnell began a second career in the non-profit field working with both the Boy Scouts of America and then with Jan Hosea & Associates, LLC, in April of 2002. He served as Chief Operations Officer for Madden Hosea & Associates.
Jim held leadership positions in numerous community and professional organizations and was recognized in 2019 with the New Mexico Platinum Music Award "for extraordinary lifetime achievement". He was currently Vice Chair of the University of New Mexico's John D. Robb Musical Trust Board of Directors, and an Advisory Board member of the New Mexico Performing Arts Society of Santa Fe. He previously served as Education Vice President, Program Vice President, Strategic Education Chair, and Ethics Education Chair, for the Board of Directors of the New Mexico Chapter of the Association for Fundraising Professionals, and was a past president and member of the Advisory Council of the Albuquerque Arts Alliance. Other affiliations have included Board of Directors, UNM College of Fine Arts Alumni Chapter (Past President), the New Mexico Music Educators' National Conference (Past President, Hall of Fame), the 1992 Arts Education Conference, and Arts Attack! Creating the Future, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra Musicians (Past President), Chamber Orchestra of Albuquerque Board of Trustees, and ACE Committee of Albuquerque Public Schools (Co-Chairperson). He represented the Great Southwest Council/Boy Scouts of America in many community roles including the District Advisory Council for Safe and Drug Free Schools, The Educational Success Alliance (Past President), the Greater Albuquerque Chamber of Commerce Career Guidance Institute K-12 Committee and Blue Ribbon Outstanding Students and Educators Awards Committee, and the Advisory Council for TASA (Team Against Substance Abuse in APS).
As a professional musician, he performed as a violist in many Southwestern organizations including the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Opera Southwest, the El Paso Symphony, the Roswell Symphony, the Albuquerque Civic Symphony, the New Mexico Chamber Orchestra, and retired in 1997 as principal viola of the Chamber Orchestra of Albuquerque. He conducted various orchestras in the Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program: Valley Junior Orchestra, Heights Junior Orchestra, Albuquerque Junior Symphony, and Albuquerque Youth Symphony. He was also active as a church musician having either served as organist and/or choirmaster at St. Matthew's and St. Michael and All Angel's Episcopal in Albuquerque, St. Andrew's Episcopal (substitute) in Las Cruces, and St. Paul's Episcopal in Artesia. Mr. Bonnell filled the role of conductor, adjudicator, and clinician on many occasions in Arizona, Wyoming, Idaho, Texas, Colorado, and New Mexico. He also was a presenter on several topics for professional education conferences in the Southwest and served as an adjunct professor at the University of New Mexico.

He was preceded in death by his grandparents, Charles and Grace Bonnell and James N. and Dessie Ogle; his parents, Charles and Edith Bonnell, and his sister, Betty Jean Bonnell Artz. He is survived by his wife, Paula Diane Thompson Bonnell, and family members including: Sue McAdams, Karen and Howard Slinkard, David and Judy Thompson, Jack Artz and numerous cousins, nieces, nephews, grand-nieces and grand-nephews.

Jim and his wife Diane, also a retired public school music educator and a professional arts administrator, most recently with the UNM Music Prep School, are members of St. John's Episcopal Cathedral in Albuquerque. Services will be held on August 5th (A Music Tribute at 1:30 and service at 2:00) at St. John's Episcopal Cathedral in Albuquerque, NM. In lieu of flowers, memorial contributions may be made to The Music Program at the Cathedral Church of St. John (318 Silver Avenue SW, Albuquerque), The Diane Bonnell Scholarship Endowment for the UNM Music Prep School (UNM Foundation), the UNM Robb Musical Trust (UNM Foundation), The Albuquerque Youth Symphony Program, or The International Myeloma Foundation.

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emerging composer
Kelly Feng // 冯重瑞 (b. 2002)
UNM MM Theory & Comp '27
April 2026

So far, I have had the chance to write and premiere three different pieces through the Robb Trust and each time I’ve been able to build meaningful connections with amazing musicians. I really appreciate Robb Trust for giving student composers an accessible platform through which they can build their portfolios. 

Learn more about our annual Composers' Symposium Series and Robb Concert.