Biography

María Granillo is a renowned Mexican composer born in Torreón Coahuila Mexico in 1962.  Her interest in deriving compositional techniques from musical poetics and sound imagination stands out, as well as themes related to natural phenomena, mythology, and the world of human emotions. Her works show an interest in the dramatic direction of musical discourse, creating sound metaphors in the form of complex and dynamic gestures that convey a wide emotional spectrum. María's work is also characterized by the integral and eclectic organization of all the elements of the musical language used in each project and always linked to a reflection full of intuition and lyricism.

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She studied Composition at the UNAM Music Faculty with Dr. Federico Ibarra Groth. She was part of the National Composition Workshop directed by Daniel Catán, Julio Estrada, Federico Ibarra and Mario Lavista. With a scholarship from UNAM, she completed a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, under the direction of Robert Saxton, and a master’s degree in music technology at the University of York in England in 1993. In 2006 she obtained a PhD in Composition at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver Canada, under the direction of Dr Keith Hamel.

Throughout her career, her main activities have been musical composition and teaching at various levels of education. Since 1993 she has been a Full Professor at the Faculty of Music at UNAM where she has directed numerous undergraduate and postgraduate theses. Her compositions cover all genres of concert music, as well as original music for theater, film and dance, and have been interpreted and recorded by the most outstanding Mexican and international performers and by the main Mexican orchestras.

The work of María Granillo is present on a regular basis in the contemporary Mexican music scene, in spaces such as the Cervantino Festival, the Manuel Enríquez International Forum of New Music, the Cantat IV Festival and eventually her works have been presented in several countries in America, Europe and Asia being the object of distinctions, such as the Mozart Medal 1996, the nomination for the Ariel trophy awarded by the Mexican Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences, the UNESCO International Tribune of Composers, the FONCA Young Creators Scholarship, the National Award for Choral Composition 1998 and 2007, the First University Prize for Composition 2012. The Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz UNAM 2014 recognition. She has been part of the National System of Art Creators.