Manuel Rocha Iturbide - Mexican Artist

Manuel Rocha Iturbide was born in 1963 in Mexico City; he started musical studies when he was 13 years old. In 1983, after studying musical pedagogy in Lyon France for one year, he determined to start a career as composer at the “Escuela National de Musical” of the University of Mexico. The enormously academic and traditional studies in that institution led him to explore different creative ways beyond instrumental music and so he practiced photography at “Taller de los Lunes”, a workshop organized by Mexican digital photography pioneer Pedro Meyer.

In 1988 he started using video work and in 1989 he realized his first sound sculpture at the mild stone exhibition “14 artists around Joseph Beuyce” in Mexico City along with significant Mexican artists from his generation such as Gabriel Orozco. In 1989 Rocha Iturbide travels to USA to the University Mills College in order to pursue an MFA in electronic music. There, he composes “Frost Clear”, a piece for enlarged refrigerator, double bass and electronic sounds that has been played by him through the years in different important festivals such as the “San Francisco electronic Music Festival” in 2006. In 1991, Rocha Iturbide travels to France where he studies and works as a researcher at IRCAM, and where he peruses his doctoral thesis on grainy synthesis and Quantum Mechanics in relation to sound from 1992 to 1999.

In these years, Manuel Rocha Iturbide worked with Curtis Roads and Barry Truax, two of the most important pioneers on granular synthesis computer music techniques. In 1999 the president of the jury of his doctoral thesis defense was Jean Claude Risset (The name of his thesis was “The granular synthesis techniques”). The influence of this research can be seen in different electroacustic works of this composer: “Transiciones de Fase” for brass quintet and electronic sounds (1994), Moin MOR for electronic sounds (1995), SL-9 for electronic sounds (1994), etc. At his return to Mexico after 7 years abroad, Manuel Rocha Iturbide devoted himself to sound art, being one of its pioneers and biggest promoters

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