Sospeso presents the world premiere of Mexican-born composer Hilda Parades' homage to Elliott Carter, Seed of Time, for chamber ensemble, on Friday, January 30, 2004. 

Hilda Parades was born in Mexico, where she studied piano and flute. She arrived in London in 1979, where she continued her studies and flute performance. During her first few years in London, she did several arrangements of popular and classical music for various ensembles, with which she regularly performed. Her first completed compositions date from this period.

As a composer, she was an active participant in master classes at Dartington Summer School with Peter Maxwell Davies and Richard Rodney Bennett. She graduated from the Guildhall School of Music and obtained her Master of Arts at City University in London. She completed her PhD at Manchester University.

In 1988, she received the Music for Dance award from the Arts Council of Great Britain for the creation of El Prestidigitor and was then invited to take part in the International Dance Course for professional composers and choreographers.

She took part in the first Garden Venture Opera Project at Dartington, organized by Covent Garden Royal Opera House in the summer of 1989, where her first music-theatre pieces were completed.

In 1990, the Arts Council of Great Britain awarded her the fellowship for composers to complete her first chamber opera The Seventh Seed, which is now released on CD by Mode Records, New York. That year, she went back to live in Mexico.

While in Mexico, she taught at the University of Mexico and, for five years, produced a weekly radio show covering new music. She also published several articles on music in various music magazines and newspapers. She was an advisor and tutor for young composers sponsored by the National Fund for Culture and the Arts. She collaborated with the Orchestra of Baja California, creating several arrangements and orchestrations of Spanish and traditional Mexican songs, some of which have been released on CD.

She has been the recipient of important awards in Great Britain, the USA, and Mexico, including the Holst Foundation Award for composers in the UK; the Sistema Nacional de Creadores Fellowship; the Rockefeller; the Fund for Culture Mexico/USA award, and, recently, the prestigious J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship in New York.

She currently lives in London as a freelance composer. She has taught composition at Manchester University and has frequently taught masterclasses in Mexico. She is now working on a chamber opera commissioned by the Neue Vocalsolisten from Stuttgart and the English National Opera Studio in London. The libretto is based on Isabel Allende's story The Phantom Palace.

Miss Paredes has been commissioned by soloists, ensembles, and orchestras in Great Britain, France, Germany, Australia, Mexico, and the US.

Her music has been widely performed at important international festivals, including Dance Umbrella and Huddersfield, in the UK; Darmstadt, Eclat, and the Romerbad Musiktage, in Germany; Musique d'aujourd'hui and Octobre en Normandie, in France; Wien Modern, in Austria; the Akiyoshidai Music Festival, in Japan; Archipel and Europaischer Musikmonat, in Switzerland; De Ijsbreker Chamber Music Festival, in the Netherlands; Warsaw Autumn, in Poland; Ultima, in Norway; the Melbourne Festival, in Australia; Festival Cervantino and Foro de Musica Neuva, in Mexico; and others.

From the composer's website, www.hildaparedes.com.