Biography
Óscar Mascareñas is a transcendental poet working in the fields of sound, light, movement and letters. He holds a PhD in Music, an MA in Chant and Ritual Song (both from the University of Limerick in Ireland), and a BSc in Industrial Physics and Engineering (from the ITESM, Mexico).He has published work and given concerts, conferences and master classes extensively in Ireland, the United States, France, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Russia, the UK, Slovakia, Hungary, Tunisia and Mexico. He was the founding course director of the BA in Voice and Dance, and was acting and assistant director of the MA Ritual Chant and Song at the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance. He holds the Founding Cage-Cunningham Chair in Contemporary Performance at the Escuela Superior de Música y Danza de Monterrey in Mexico.
Óscar's research interests cover a wide range of subjects and disciplines (some of them viewed through an inter- and trans-disciplinary lens) and include, poetry, music and dance performance, somatic approaches to sound composition and performance, improvisation, monochromatic photography, radical pedagogy, Zen, early music and chant, the philosophy of music as well as the notions of nothingness, fragmentation, time and space in contemporary practice. He currently lectures and researches in music and contemporary performance at the Academy, and works independently as a composer and performer internationally.
His recent works include the album Songs for Jackson Pollock was released in white vinyl in 2018, and for online streaming (Spotify, AppleMusic, iTunes, YouTube Music, Pandora, Shazam) in 2019); as well as music for contemporary dance theatre, such as Merlin (2019) produced by Iseli-Chiodi Dance Company in Ireland and La Fábrica de las Cosas Pendientes (2018/2021) produced and performed in Mexico with the support of EFI Artes and the Mexican Ministry of Culture. His book Meditations on the Poetics of Experience a series of reflexive essays on experience as expressed through the fundamental concepts of listening, silence, sound, time, movement, light and space was published in 2021 by ERÓS.
More about his work can be consulted at www.ioscar.ie
Research Interests
Poetry, performative poetry, music and dance performance, the concept of time in music and dance composition and performance, contemporary practice, somatic approaches to music composition, music education, early music and the philosophy of music, Gregorian chant scholarship, chant performance, medieval music theory and performance
Professional Activities
Employment
- 2014 University of Limerick - Lecturer in Music
Committee
- 2012 Network of Mexican Professionals in Ireland,
- 2012 Irish Association of Mexican Studies,
- 2004 Cantus Planus. Study group of the International Musicological Society,
- 2003 Society for Musicology in Ireland,
Education
- 2010 University of Limerick - PhD
- 2001 University of Limerick - Master of Arts
- 1997 Instituto Tecnologico y de Est. Sup. de Monterrey - B.Sc.
Language
- Spanish
- English
- Italian
Other
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