Cuban Composer and musical journalist, born in the Habana, established in New York. He has scored original music for seven films, has composed more than 60 works for chamber, vocal and symphonic music, and has created several musical innovations.
While in Cuba, he studied at the National Conservatory from which he was graduated early and became a professor of music. Shortly thereafter, in 1951, he published his first musical innovation, Phonochromy, a system of musical notation especially suited to highlight sound dynamics, using three elementary colors in printing standard scores, which has made music writing a bit more contemporary. So, traditional dynamic signs are eliminated and their significance is represented by colors: p = blue; mf = violet; f = red. As we know, each note carries its sound and value; now, being colored, it also carries its volume...
Ubieta was also featured as a musicological journalist for El Mundo, at that time, one of Cuba's most prestigious and widely read of all national newspapers. Between story deadlines, he also composed many works for the Teatro de Bellas Artes of Havana.
As 1959 got underway, Ubieta became founding composer of the National Film Institute (ICAIC), where he was commissioned to compose for several successful films, which have received multiple awards at some of the most renowned international film festivals. The following year, he was formally invited to study with Aram I. Khachaturian at the Conservatory of Moscow, where he spent some time in working under the composer's mentorship. Upon returning to Havana, he continued writing chamber and vocal music aired on national television. He also made known a contemporary school of his own conception: Bimodalism--a harmonic system where major and minor modes are blended simultaneously in the same tonality from beginning to end in a musical work, uninterrupted and occurring as a unique harmonic element. Bimodalism, as a school, has no systematic precedent. (Ubieta's treatise, Bimodalism: A New Dimension and Ethos in Harmony, elucidates the complete methodology and mechanics of the system, with copious theoretical examples and illustrations). In 1961, the French film directors Joris Ivens and Chris Marker used his music in their native film productions. The following year, Ubieta published another innovation: Pictorial Music Score, a pictographic system that consists of the substitution of instrument names in scores and parts by their respective images. Advantageous factors of readability support this innovation: The instrumental image is universal; its name is not Moreover, the eye detects the image faster and better than the word. (Thirty years after this graphic innovation was merchandised worldwide by Ubieta, Sibelius music notation software is now providing it to their users in its latest version.)
His zarzuela cómica, Mefistófeles, was premiered in 1964, as he was appointed composer in residence of the Havana Musical Theatre, by its then Mexican director, Alfonso Arau. Later this year, Ubieta left Cuba to reside in Paris, where he joined SACEM, the French Society of Composers. While in Paris, his music was widely broadcast by the Radiodiffusion Française. He also composed several works for the French Scholastic Television, as well as for other private firms. Ubieta's symphonic work, The Cuban Mass (vocal score published in 1975 by Walton Music Corp.), was premiered in 1973 at the Cathedral of Saint John The Divine, by Dr. Alec Wyton, former national president of the American Guild of Organists and master of choristers at the cathedral, with the composer serving as guest conductor. The Cuban Mass was continuously performed by the late Norman Luboff's renowned chorus. It was also performed by Almeda and Jackson Berkey's Soli Deo Gloria Cantorum, as well as by several other groups in the U.S. and abroad. Then in 1975, the first of Ubieta's guitar pieces, Bimodal, was premiered at Carnegie Recital Hall. Bimodal has been played by many guitarists on New York radio stations and at concert halls in the U.S. and abroad.
Ubieta was commissioned to compose and conduct the music of the motion picture, El Super, a New Yorker Films release in 1978. It won the 1979 Mannheim Foreign Film Award, co-won the 1979 Venetian Critic's Award, won the 1980 Biarritz Award, and numerous other awards. The original motion-picture score was recorded on a Kim Records label, and a guitar version of the theme, transcribed by the composer, was premiered live on WNCN (GAF Broadcasting, NY) and later recorded in 1985 by the guitarist, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, for Concord Records. In 1999, the guitarist Manuel Barrueco recorded New York Rush, in his ¡Cuba! EMI CD release. The movie theme, New York Rush, is now published in its various versions by G. Schirmer, Inc. In mid 1980, Ubieta was commissioned by the U.S. government to compose the music of their documentary, In Their Own Words (Gold Medal winner at the 23rd New York International Film Festival). In 1985, Ubieta premiered his first piano trio, Canon Over Hanon, at the Vineyard Theatre in New York. This work, aesthetically analogous to its congeners in painting, is a true musical collage, where melodic layers by the violin and cello are painted over the first 20 lessons of the famous piano method (real object). The New York Council on the Arts commissioned him in 1986 to compose his second piano trio, Lo Negro Y Lo Blanco. It was premiered by Trío Música Hispana Levande Ton, a leading Swedish choral group, conducted by Thore Kennestad, recorded the Kyrie and Alleluia from The Cuban Mass in 1986 on the Scandinavian Four-Leaf Clover label. (Instrumental accompaniment of this recording was performed by the recognized Cuban pianist, Bebo Valdés, and two typical percussionists.)
To commemorate the centennial of the birth of Heitor Villa-Lobos, in 1987, Ubieta composed La Cubachiana Ubieta scored several versions of said work, some of which are under publication agreement with G. Schirmer, Inc. The Florilegium Chamber Choir premiered the version for chorus and piano at Merkin Concert Hall in New York. (Both The Cuban Mass and La Cubachiana received excellent reviews at this concert.)
His choral work, Voces de Navidad (Christmas Voices) with Spanish and English lyrics written by the composer, was premiered in 1991 by the chamber choir, Las Voces, conducted by Xiomara Di Maio. In 1994, the complete vocal / orchestral version of The Cuban Mass debuted in Stockholm by well-known Swedish performers, during the annual and prominent Skinnskatteberg Choral Festival. This two-day performance received a long-standing ovation by an audience exceeding 700 attendees. The Bach Choir of Pittsburgh under the direction of Brady Allred, successfully performed The Cuban Mass, in October 1998, at the Carlow College Community Center in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Westchester Philharmonic and the Chorus of the Americas, performed the Kyrie, Sanctus and Alleluia from The Cuban Mass, in January 1999, under the baton of Paul Lustig Dunkel, its Music Director and Conductor. In recent years, some more performers have presented music by Ubieta, in concert. Among them, Chucho Valdés with his quartet, who performed and recorded live, Son XXI, at the Village Vanguard in New York City, on April 9 & 10 of 1999. Other worth mentioning, are the piano recitalist, and dean of the arts at the University of California, in Irving, Nohema Fernandez ; and the Acapella Choir from the University of Wisconsin-Superior, conducted by Dr. Matthew Faerber. In April 2002, The Cleveland Duo of James Umble & Carolyn G. Warner successfully performed the trio version (with Sax.) of La Cubachiana, in Jefferson, Ohio.
Web: http://www.ubieta.com/