ILNAMIKILISPAN

BY J.E. Hernández, J. Mae Barizo, Priscella Uvalle

DEC 15TH, 7:00 PM → CONRAD PREBYS MUSIC CENTER, EXPERIMENTAL THEATER

Project [BLANK] presents the west-coast premiere of RESERVOIR 2: INTRUSION by groundbreaking American composer Sarah Hennies. This evening-length work for choir and flute blurs the lines between performance and installation, and is based on the idea that the unconscious mind can act as a deep “reservoir” or repository for our most profound memories. Our new staging will activate and transform the vaulted spaces of St. Paul’s Cathedral, enveloping the listener in a constellation of voices calling out from the depths.

Featuring a new light and video installation designed by Allison O. Evans, and singers from the San Diego New Verbal Workshop.

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J.E. Hernández (b.1993) is a Mexican-born, San Diego/Houston-based composer, audio/visual practitioner, researcher and ethnographer focusing on bridging the gap between inner and outer genealogies through a sonic and multi-disciplinary practice. J.E.'s work has been featured by distinguished ensembles and organizations such as the Tanglewood Music Center, the Kennedy Center for the Arts, the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Opera Theatre of Saint Louis, Houston Grand Opera, American Opera Project, Performing Arts Houston, Apollo Chamber Players, Foundation for Modern Music, Museum of Fine Arts Houston, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, American Composers Forum, the Brazil National Orchestra, and in a wide variety of films. He holds a degree from the University of Houston. Past teachers include Marcus Maroney, Gregory Spears, and Gabriel Pareyón. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Music Composition at the University of California, San Diego.

Hernández's artistic practice is centered on fostering dialogue between histories, communities, and artistic disciplines. By integrating multi-axial artistic frameworks with contemporary technologies such as real-time sound processing and wearable movement devices, he seeks to create spaces where Originary and modern knowledge can engage in dialogic performance. His work is about activating memory, sound, and movement as tools for understanding and being in a post-colonial world. His interest in interdisciplinary storytelling extends beyond composition, integrating cinematography, movement, and site-responsive performance as ways to engage with the spaces and people that shape his work.

Recent and upcoming projects include Ilnamikilispan, a chamber work focusing on the transformative aspect of generational historicity and trauma, supported by the MAP Fund; 'Ux Winal, a multi-disciplinary sound installation exploring intimacy via methodological dialogues between Originary frameworks and modern sound design; and East End Echoes Vol. 1, a sound walk done in collaboration with the city of Houston which documented the sonic profile of Latinx migrants from Houston's historic East End.

J.E. Hernández, COMPOSER

J. MAe barizo, poet

Born in Toronto, J. Mae Barizo is a poet, essayist and transdisciplinary artist who works at the intersection of poetics, media and performance. She is the author of two books of poetry, Tender Machines (Tupelo Press, 2023) and The Cumulus Effect (Four Way Books, 2015). Becoming Hybrid, her book on transdisciplinary and literary theory is forthcoming in the Poets on Poetry series from University of Michigan Press. Pink Noise, a book of hybrid essays on John Cage and the poetics of sound was a finalist for the Graywolf Nonfiction Prize and the 2023 Megaphone Prize. Her work has been anthologized in books published by Simon and Schuster, W.W. Norton, Atelier Editions and Harvard University Press.

An advocate of transdisciplinary work, she has collaborated with artists such as Salman Rushdie, Mark Morris and the American String Quartet. As a librettist, she is the inaugural recipient of Opera America's IDEA residency, given to artists who have the potential to shape the future of opera. DRIFT, her opera (written with composer Alyssa Weinberg) on motherhood and migration, will be premiered with Opera Saratoga in 2026. ISOLA, a feminist monodrama written with composer Alyssa Weinberg, had its world premiere in 2024 with Long Beach Opera. UNBROKEN, an opera written with Ronald Maurice, was commissioned by and premiered by Opera Theatre of St. Louis.

She is also the recipient of fellowships and awards from the MAP Fund, Bennington College, Mellon Foundation, Critical Minded and Poets House. She was an Artist-in-Residence at Baryshnikov Arts and her monodrama "Cloud Variations" had its world premiere at Carnegie Hall in 2025, performed by The Knights. Recent writing appears in The Atlantic, Poetry, Ploughshares, Esquire, Los Angeles Review of Books, Paris Review Daily, Boston Review, BookForum, among others. She is the Chair of Undergraduate Creative Writing Program and on the MFA graduate faculty at The New School. She lives in New York City.

Priscella Uvalle, movement

Priscella Uvalle Alma Pérez is a Mexico City–born performer, choreographer, and director whose work bridges Indigenous performance traditions with contemporary theater and dance. Trained in classical, contemporary, and traditional Indigenous movement, she is one of few practitioners of cuicatl—an ancestral Nahua form combining movement, song, and poetry. She gained wide recognition in Xochicuicatl Cuecuechtli, the first opera in Nahuatl, and co-directed and performed in Helah, commissioned by Houston Grand Opera. She now serves as co-director, choreographer, and principal performer in ILNAMIKILISPAN, shaping its dramaturgy, vocal expression, and movement. Her practice centers Indigenous cosmologies, ritual, and intergenerational knowledge, offering audiences ceremonial, embodied experiences that challenge Western frameworks and honor living Mesoamerican traditions.