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Venezuelan-American conductor, scholar and interdisciplinary artist Carmen-Helena Téllez
has been called “a quiet force behind contemporary music in the United States today” by the
New York-based award-winning online journal Sequenza21. A multifaceted artist, she takes a
comprehensive and co-creative approach to new music performance, devoting special
attention to vocal-instrumental and staged genres, involving interdisciplinary media and
musical scholarship, in an approach that The Washington Post has called "immersing and
thrilling."
Carmen Helena Téllez balances activities as a creative artist, conductor, scholar, producer
and administrator. In 2012 she joined the famed University of Notre Dame as Professor of
Conducting and Resident Artist for Interdisciplinary Projects with a grant from the Mellon
Foundation. Previously, she was Director of Graduate Choral Studies and the Director of the
Latin American Music Center at the prestigious Jacobs School of Music of Indiana
University, where she also directed their Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. She is also the
Artistic Co-Director of Aguavá New Music Studio, an artists’ group with which she records
and tours internationally. She has been previously the Resident Conductor of the Chicago
Contemporary Chamber Players (Contempo), the Music Director of the National Chorus of
Spain, and a Visiting Professor at Dartmouth College. In September 2012, she conducted
James MacMillan's The Seven Last Words from the Cross at Notre Dame, in a major
conference organized by eminent musicologist Margot Fassler, counting with the
presence of the composer.
Born in Caracas, where she completed conservatory studies in piano and composition,
Carmen Helena Téllez obtained a Doctor of Music degree with Highest Distinction at
Indiana University in 1989. Her document “Musical Form and Dramatic Concept in
Handel's Athalia” won the ACDA Julius Herford National Dissertation Award in 1991,
and was the first study to propose the influence of Racine on the development of the
modern oratorio. She has maintained her devotion to music scholarship, and is currently
writing books on Latin American Choral and Avant-Garde Genres.
As Director of the Latin American Music Center, Carmen-Helena Téllez supervised the
largest collection of Latin American art music outside of the Library of Congress and a
constellation of research and promotion activities. For the LAMC she has organized three
Inter-American Music Symposia and many special events, created a performance
competition, produced several recordings, and implemented a Latin American ensemble and
several courses.
As Director of Graduate Choral Studies she supervised the Masters and Doctoral
programs, and taught the doctoral seminars in the role of mentor once undertaken by Julius
Herford, George Buelow, Thomas Dunn and Jan Harrington. As Professor of Conducting she
has conducted 20th-century masterpieces by Stravinsky, Ligeti, Schnittke, Xenakis,
Lutoslawski, and many others; but she also has conducted the canonic symphonic-choral
repertoire. In the year 2000 she became the first woman on record to conduct the monumental
Grande messe des morts by Hector Berlioz with 450 performers on stage.
Carmen Helena Téllez has been responsible for the commission and world premiere of many
works that have garnered the highest critical praise. In 2008 she produced and conducted the
video-opera Unicamente la verdad, by Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz and video artist
Rubén Ortiz. In 2006 she conducted the world-premiere of James MacMillan's Sun-Dogs, a
work she co-commissioned for the Indiana University Contemporary Vocal Ensemble with
the Netherlands Chamber Choir, the Three Choirs Festival and Soundstreams
(Canada). Mario Lavista's Missa ad Consolationes Dominam Nostram, Cary Boyce's Ave
Maria and Ingram Marshall's Savage Altars are among the works commissioned and
premiered by Carmen Helena Téllez that have established themselves among the most
distinguished choral compositions of the last few years.
Carmen Helena Téllez has also brought important contemporary works to audiences in the
American Midwest for the first time. In October of 2007, she presented the collegiate
premiere and first Indiana performance of Osvaldo Golijov's opera Ainadamar, to rave
reviews. In the summer of 2006 she prepared the vocalists and coached the forces of the
Grant Park Festival in the Chicago premiere of Antonio Estévez's iconic Venezuelan
masterpiece La Cantata Criolla, performed at Frank Gehry's Pritzker Pavilion. She has also
conducted the Midwest and collegiate premiere of John Adams's opera-oratorio El Niño, as
well as the American premiere of Ralph Shapey's oratorio Praise, originally composed for
the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Israel. With Aguavá New Music
Studio she brings her commissions and premieres to the professional circuit. She has toured
the United States, Mexico, Colombia and Israel with Aguavá's ensemble, also producing and
conducting their recordings.
As part of her increasingly focused dedication to interdisciplinary presentation, she cocreated an immersive theatre production of Don Freund's Passion with Tropes in May 2011,
in collaboration with artists Robert Shakespeare, Susanne Schwibs and Margaret Dolinsky. In
early September 2009 Carmen Helena Téllez designed and conducted in Sao Paulo , Brazil a
multimedia performance of Orff’s Carmina Burana as a commentary on the artist and fascist
society. In October of the same year she conducted the fiendishly difficult Svadebka (Les
Noces)ballet by Stravinsky at Indiana University, and is currently working on an art-video
installation based on Pulitzer composer Shulamit Ran’s Credo/Ani Ma’Amin. Her art video
The Bells of Leopardi, based on a staged performance of a composition by Yehuda Yannay,
can be viewed in YouTube.com. As an outgrowth of these explorations, Carmen Helena
Téllez has returned to composition, and will include some of her own works in Aguavá's
upcoming seasons.
As a scholar and conductor Carmen Helena Téllez has won many grants and awards from
the US-Mexico Fund for Culture, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Lilly Foundation New
Frontiers Award, the Indiana Arts Commission, and the United States Information
Agency. She is also a respected consultant on contemporary Latin American music and has
assisted important professional organizations in the United States and Europe, including Los
Angeles Philharmonic and the American Composers Orchestra. She has also been a board
member of the American Composers Forum as well as an adjudicator for the Tomás Luis de
Victoria and Otto Mayer Serra Prizes.. She has written several entries for the Grove
Dictionary of Music and has lectured on contemporary Latin American repertoire and on
interdisciplinary performance in the United States, Latin America and Spain. She has also
collaborated with international organizations like the Colegio Nacional de Mexico, for
which she recorded a CD of the unpublished works of Carlos Chávez.
RECENT REVIEWS
"Immersing and thrilling..."
The Washington Post
“Aguavá New Music Studio (conducted by Carmen Helena Téllez) is easily one of the most
impressive ensembles in America today.”
Ivan Moody
International Record Review, London
“El Niño, first performed two years ago in Paris, was given its Midwest premiere Wednesday
evening at the Musical Arts Center, thanks to about 200 choristers, the IU Symphony, a half
dozen soloists and conductor Carmen Tellez. Leave it to Tellez to take on the grand challenge.
Her way with the Berlioz Requiem is a remembered for-instance of recent vintage. Here, she's
done it again: engineered a remarkable performance feat.”
Peter Jacobi
The Herald Times, Bloomington
“The opera was conducted by the sure-handed Carmen Helena Tellez, one quiet forces behind
contemporary music in America today.”
Jerry Bowles
Sequenza 21, New York