Javier Alvarez

Born in Mexico City in 1956, he studied composition with Mario Lavista before moving to the United States and then to Britain, where he attended the Royal College of Music and City University London. Among the best-known Mexican composers of his generation, he built a career at the intersection of electroacoustic music and Latin American musical traditions. His work Temazcal (1984), pitting maracas against an electroacoustic backdrop, became a landmark of the genre, while Mannam (1992), juxtaposing Korean and Mexican folk elements, received a Prix Ars Electronica distinction in 1993. He died in Mérida, Yucatán in May 2023.