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“Mañana Me Voy Pa'l Norte:" Exploring Chile’s Band Music

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This clinic traces the development of a concert of Chilean wind-band music curated by Chris Westover-Muñoz and Ricardo Alvarez-Bulacio. First performed in April 2025, this project is the outcome of a collaboration between Chilean and American musician/professors and their research on Chilean bands. The clinic demonstrates a model for intercultural collaboration and will share the unique repertoire curated by Alvarez and Westover.

The concert repertoire shared in this clinic traces the history of Chilean bands from the 19th century influence of Prussian music to recent activist bands. The shared repertoire will include indigenous brass band music from the La Fiesta de La Tirana, several Nueva Cancion works (specifically, the music of Luis Advis, Sergio Ortega, Violeta Parra, and Victor Jara), and examples of the international influence of Chilean music through the music of Louis Andriessen and Orkest de Volharding. The clinic also includes examples of band music used during the Estallido Social and their influence in Chilean musical culture in the time since the social outbreak. Shared repertoire includes music for bands of all levels and sizes.

The clinic will provide suggestions for developing relationships and fostering collaborations with international partners and promises to share a wide range of repertoire from a part of Latin America which is largely unknown to many wind-band musicians.

Chris Westover-Muñoz

An award-winning conductor, Dr. Chris Westover-Muñoz has conducted and curated programs for wind ensembles and orchestras around the globe. In 2019, he was First Prize winner of the Warsaw Wind Ensemble Conducting Competition. His work has been praised by composers, including Daniel Roumain, Aleksander Lasoń, Augusta Read Thomas, who called his work “elegant, bold, vibrant, inspiring, and centered.” He has recently given notable performances in Poland, including his recent debut at the Penderecki European Centre for Music where he led the Polish premiere of Karel Husa’s Music for Prague 1968. As a scholar he has presented his research on four continents. His research includes work on Persichetti, Beethoven, Julius Gerold, music of the IWW, Chilean band music, and the wind-band as a social/aesthetic practice. His reenactment of early IWW performance practice, Starvation Army: Band Music No. 1, is available on all streaming platforms. He serves on the advisory board of IGEB and is a jury member of the Warsaw Wind-Band Conducting Competition. Dr. Westover-Muñoz is associate professor of music at Denison University and Music Director of the Newton Mid-Kansas Symphony Orchestra. He holds a Doctor of Musical Arts in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Oklahoma.