Javier Torres Maldonado (born 1968) is a Mexican-Italian composer internationally recognized for, mostly, his orchestral, chamber, vocal and electro-acoustic works.
Born in Chetumal (Mexico), José Javier Torres Maldonado studied violin and composition at the Mexico City Conservatory and later, invited by Franco Donatoni, composition at the “G. Verdi” Milan Conservatory, under the supervision of Sandro Gorli and Alessandro Solbiati; he completed his postgraduate studies under Franco Donatoni, Azio Corghi (Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, Accademia Musicale Chigiana) and Ivan Fedele (Conservatoire de Strasbourg). In 2003, he earned a diploma from the G. Verdi Conservatory for his work in electronic music, and in 2004 he was one of ten composers asked to participate in the Stage de Composition et Informatique Musicale at the Parisian center IRCAM.
In most of his works, Torres Maldonado explores innovative ways of organizing time, timbre and space. For example, in his piece for ensemble and electro-acoustic support, De Ignoto Cantu (2004), the composer presents several melody lines which, despite their complexity, actually derive from a single simple source consisting in a few number of elements; each line contains a considerable degree of horizontal-spectral consonance, but the vertical intervals and the variety of rhythmic accents in each line create a tough dissonance, both in harmony and rhythm, it is: he uses harmonic fields associated to layered pulsation patterns and metric modulation to create a sonic analog to the distorting process of reflection, “almost like a rotating lens through which the view goes in and out of focus”.