LACH LAU, JUAN SEBASTIAN

Juan Sebastián Lach Lau

Mexico City, 1970.

Composer-performer, professor and practice-based researcher

His instrumental and electronic music combines generative and interactive algorithmic processes, microtonal harmonic exploration and transformations allusive to diverse musics and social situations. He performs electronic media and composes mainly in collaboration with soloists and ensembles.

His music has been played by ensambles such as Liminar, Cepromusic, Onix, Ensamble 3 and Cuarteto Latinoamericano in Mexico; Modelo62, The Electronic Hammer and The Barton Workshop in Holland; soloists such as Carmina Escobar, Diego Espinosa, Ludwig Carrasco, Alexander Bruck and Eva Zöllner; it has been edited in various compilations as well as in a portrait album of chamber music, Islas (Navona Records, 2013).

He began playing piano since childhood, played keyboards in experimental jazz group Psicotrópicos (1986-92) and afterwards with the influential rock group Santa Sabina (1991-01), recording six albums and touring extensively. Also studied mathematics at UNAM and composition at CIEM and with Juan Trigos, Víctor Rasgado and Ignacio Baca Lobera and composed music for theatre, film and radio. In 2001 he travelled to Holland to study a Bachelor (2003) and Master (2005) degree in composition at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague with Clarence Barlow and Gilius van Bergeijk, also studying Sonology (with a grant from FONCA, Mexico). Thereafter he enrolled in the docARTES program at the Orpheus Institute in Ghent, Belgium and obtained a doctorate in Artistic Research from Leiden University (2012) with a thesis on algorithmic microtonal harmony and dissonance curves. From 2008 to 2018 he taught composition at the Las Rosas conservatory in Morelia, Mexico and since 2018 is Associate Professor at the Music Technology program at ENES Morelia, UNAM. He has been a member of the Sistema Nacional de Creadores (from the Mexican Culture Ministry, 2013 and 2017).