Hilda Paredes

Hilda Paredes (born Tehuacan, Puebla, 1957) is one of Mexico's leading contemporary composers, and has received many prestigious awards for her work.

She currently resides in London, and is married to the noted English violinist, Irvine Arditti.

Paredes was born in Tehuacan, Puebla, Mexico, where she studied the piano and flute.

At the age of 21, she went to London for college where she continued her studies and performances as a flutist.

She regularly performed, and did arrangements for popular and classical music with several ensembles.

During these times she was beginning to complete her own compositions.

As a student she attended master classes at Dartington Summer School, studied with Peter Maxwell Davies and Richard Rodney Bennett.

After graduating at the Guildhall School of Music, she obtained her Master of Arts at City University in London and completed her PhD at Manchester University.

Her collaboration with choreographers led her to receive the Music for Dance Award from the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1988.

Not long after her collaboration with the Garden Venture Opera Project in Dartington, she completed her first chamber opera "The Seventh Seed", released by Mode Records.

Paredes continues to be involved in the musical life of her native country, teaching at the National University in Mexico City, as radio producer of new music, as well as collaborating with the Orchestra of Baja California arranging traditional Spanish and Mexican songs.

She has been recipient of important awards, such as the Arts Council of Great Britain fellowship for composers; the Rockefeller, Fund for Culture Mexico/USA and more recently the J.S. Guggenheim Fellowship in the USA.

Paredes continues to live in London, is a freelance composer, has taught composition and lectured at Manchester University, the University of San Diego California, as well as in Mexico, Spain, at Centre Acanthes in France and was the 2007 Darius Milhaud Visiting Professor at Mills College in the US.

Her second completed chamber opera "El Palacio Imaginado", commissioned by Musik der Jahrhunderte, English National Opera and the Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven, premiered with much acclaim in both sides of the Atlantic.

Hilda Paredes has been commissioned by soloists, ensembles and orchestras around the world.

Her music has been performed by internationally renowned ensembles such as Lontano, London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Modern, Neue Vocalsolisten, Ensemble Signal, Ensemble Sospeso, and Arditti Quartet It has been widely performed at important international festivals, such as Huddersfield in the UK; Berlin Philharmonic and Eclat in Germany; Festival D'Automne, Cité de la Musique, Musica and Octobre en Normandie, in France; Wien Modern, in Austria; Akiyoshidai Music Festival, in Japan; Archipel, in Geneva; De Ijsbreker Chamber Music Festival, in Amsterdam; Warsaw Autumn, in Poland; Ultima, in Oslo; Melbourne Festival, in Australia; Festival of Arts and Ideas and June in Buffalo in the USA, Ars Musica in Bruxelles; Festival de Alicante, in Spain; Festival Internacional Cervantino in Mexico, amongst others.

A music theatre work based on the life of the Afro-American freedom fighter Harriet Tubman premiered in 2018 in Amsterdam and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival.

University of York Music Press is now publishing: