Mario Lavista

Born in Mexico City in 1943, Mario Lavista studied at the National Conservatory under Carlos Chávez and Rodolfo Halffter, then in Paris at the Schola Cantorum, attending courses by Nadia Boulanger and Karlheinz Stockhausen. He founded the collective improvisation group Quanta in 1970 and the journal Pauta in 1982, which became one of Latin America's most important music publications. His opera Aura, based on a story by Carlos Fuentes, premiered at the Palacio de Bellas Artes in 1988. He was a member of El Colegio Nacional from 1998 and held a 1987 Guggenheim Fellowship. He died in November 2021.