Composer Spotlight on Conspirare’s Email List

As I keep updating my website, I realize that I’ve had many interviews and this was a great one with Robin Bradford from Conspirare. As I will share in other posts, Conspirare commissioned me to write a piece for them and the Miró Quartet, but more on that later!

You can now stream both concert nights until January 8th, 2023. I highly recommend both nights as it was such a powerful event and I am so grateful to be part of it and advocate for social justice through new choral music.

Here is the link to the concerts. If you want to skip to my piece, click here.

And now, here is the interview!

Conspirare commissioned Carlos Cordero’s composition “HOW CAN YOU” which premiered the first night of Hear Me Out. Cordero describes the piece, which includes speaking as well as singing, as “equal parts bold and fragile.” As a gay Latinx immigrant living in Austin, Cordero has experienced the invisibility, fear, and pain expressed in “HOW CAN YOU.” He says the piece “challenges us to be agents of action and calls out the acts of injustice.”

For Cordero, hearing “HOW CAN YOU” performed was profound. “Conspirare is a choral powerhouse and what they were able to create out of my piece was outstanding,” he says. “By adding their experiences and thoughts, they created a layer that I would not be able to add myself.” This is why he loves collaborating with other artists. He also appreciated how Miró Quartet‘s Joshua Gindele performed the cello part. “I was particularly moved by his openness to color his sound to tell the story of this piece in a vulnerable and honest way,” Cordero says.

Cordero grew up in Maracaibo, Venezuela, with a family who nurtured his love of music. An only child, he played keyboard, organ, cuatro, and sang, even recording himself to try to edit, mix, and explore sounds. As a composer, Cordero is most influenced by everyday people. “Their words, and how they act,” he explains. “They show me how I want the experience of music making and communication to be.” Though just 30 years old, Cordero has earned much recognition as a composer, including the Sandra Fivecoat Award from our local choral colleague the Inversion Ensemble.

Cordero is now busy finishing a piece called “We Are Waves” commissioned by the Mendelssohn Chorus of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth Youthchoirs. When not making music, Cordero crochets to calm himself. He made unique crocheted “crowns” for all the Hear Me Out composers as well as the performers of his piece as a way to connect and celebrate.