Print-ready page Music Faculty By: Department: • Choral Conducting Centers and Programs: • Latin American Music Center Related Links: • Aguava New Music Studio

Carmen Helena Tellez

• Professor of Music, Jacobs School of Music
• Director, Latin American Music Center

Education:

• D.M. , Indiana University, 1989
• M.M. , Indiana University, 1982
• B.M. , Indiana University, 1980

Background:

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Venezuelan-American conductor Carmen Helena Téllez has been called "a quiet force behind contemporary music in the United States today" by the New York-based award-winning online journal Sequenza21. She devotes her attention to vocal-instrumental and staged genres that involve a variety of art forms, digital media, and musical scholarship: an approach that the Washington Post has called "immersing and thrilling."

She is currently the director of Graduate Choral Studies and the director of the Latin American Music Center at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where she also directs its Contemporary Vocal Ensemble. She joined the faculty of the Jacobs School in 1992.

Téllez is also the artistic co-director of Aguavá New Music Studio, an artists' group with which she records and tours internationally. She has been the resident conductor of the Chicago Contemporary Chamber Players and the music director of the National Chorus of Spain.

Téllez has commissioned and premiered many important new works, including Gabriela Ortiz's video-opera Unicamente la verdad, James MacMillan's choral suite Sun-Dogs; Mario Lavista's Missa ad Consolationes Dominam Nostram; Cary Boyce's Ave Maria and Ingram Marshall's Savage Altars. She has also presented the collegiate premieres and first Midwest performances of Osvaldo Golijov's opera, Ainadamar, John Adams' opera-oratorio, El Niño, and Ralph Shapey's oratorio, Praise, originally composed for the celebrations of the 50th anniversary of the foundation of Israel.

Born in Caracas, where she completed conservatory studies in piano and composition, Téllez obtained a Doctor of Music degree with highest distinction at Indiana University in 1989. Her document "Musical Form and Dramatic Concept in Handel's Athalia" won the ACDA Julius Herford National Dissertation Award in 1991.

Along with the contemporary performances for which she is noted, Téllez also has conducted the canonic symphonic-choral repertoire and became the first woman on record to conduct the monumental Requiem by Hector Berlioz, in 2000. For the Latin American Music Center, she has produced four festivals, created three courses and a competition, and produced several recordings. She is also the editor of a new series on Latin American Music for Oxford University Press and is preparing a new book on Latin American Choral Music.

Her website is carmentellez.com.