On October 29th and 30th, the First ULagos Musicology Symposium, Reflections on Musical Research and Creation, organized by Javier Silva-Zurita, was held in Puerto Montt. The event brought together around 30 researchers from various Chilean cities, as well as guests from Argentina and Australia, to discuss topics ranging from classical, folk, contemporary, Latin American, tropical, and children’s music, among others.

The CMUS associate researcher noted: “This is the first symposium we’ve held on music. We hope it will be the first of many, and it’s very significant because it has had such a large turnout. Likewise, I want to thank CMUS and its participants for their support in making this happen.”

Javier Silva-Zurita moderated the opening lecture, “Art and Science: Intuition and Rationality,” by Adrián Pertout. The Chilean-Australian composer showcased examples of his compositions performed by diverse artists from around the world, using a wide array of unusual instruments, demonstrating his prolific and versatile creativity. He commented, “I’m very interested in exploring the process, the aesthetics of composition, and everything involved in developing an idea. That’s what excites me about writing music. The interesting thing about seeing other cultures is being able to take some elements and incorporate them into the structure of a composition, because pure music isn’t as interesting.”

On the other hand, Ignacio Soto, principal researcher at CMUS, gave the presentation “Creation and Linguistic Activism: The Case of a Musician from the Los Lagos Region.” In it, he referred to the artist Leftraru Hualamán, who composed a bilingual song using Chezungun and Spanish, “breaking the hegemonic idea of ​​using Spanish first to reach a wider audience. This fosters processes of identity reaffirmation, in which Spanish underlies Chezungun, not the other way around.”

The symposium concluded with a concert by the ULagos Ensemble under the direction of Jorge Pacheco with two musical pieces: The first “Hornopirén II” by Edgar Girtain and the second “The wind is a horse, for choir, chamber orchestra, electronics and visuals No. 492”, which Andrián Pertout composed especially for the event.