Words matter, and to Pablo Ortiz — Distinguished Professor of Music at UC Davis — they are vital to his music.

Deeply influenced by poetry and literature, his vast compositional output includes numerous choral works, works for voice and ensembles of differing sizes, and several operas among many other instrumental works. Ortiz’s successes have earned him numerous commissions, including from the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, Terezin Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and a prestigious Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. With three decades of teaching and service to the university, Ortiz has retired and joined the emeriti faculty.

“Pablo Ortiz’s work as a composer has made an indelible mark in the contemporary music scene, locally, nationally, and internationally,” writes Professor Sam Nichols, the Chair of the UC Davis Music Department. “His music bridges different worlds: its playful, sparkling texture collides with a nostalgia-drenched lyricism. His work reframes the tango, combining an exquisitely sophisticated technique with a heartfelt musicality. During his time on campus, he’s helped put Davis on the map as a vibrant center for contemporary music, while forging deep relationships with colleagues from a wide variety of disciplines. It’s hard to imagine our department without him.”  

In celebration of Ortiz’s long career, the Department of Music presented a short concert which previewed selections from a new album of Ortiz’s art songs titled “here at the end of the world,” which was released this month. Written for soprano Lucy Fitz Gibbon, who has local roots, and her artistic collaborator and husband, Ryan MacEvoy McCullough, the music includes songs set to poetry of UC Davis Professor of English Katie Peterson, who is also director of the campus’s graduate program in creative writing.

As the first holder of the rotating endowed Popper Chair in Opera, Ortiz re-orchestrated one of his earlier chamber operas Parodia after Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda — a tragic tale set during the first crusade. In 2024, Ortiz’s most recent opera, titled Κασσάνδρα (Kassandra), premiered at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina as part of a co-production by the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón (CETC) — an organization which has previously commissioned Ortiz — and the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera. As the title suggests, the opera tells the story of Kassandra, the Greek truth-teller cursed by Apollo to never be believed. Ortiz set the music to text by the Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco. Set across multiple universes, the mythological story is surprisingly connected to the present: Kassandra is characterized as a traveler — a migrant marginalized socially, linguistically, and by gender. The role was sung by Maria Castillo de Lima, who is a transgender soprano.

His several musical collaborators have included renowned vocal ensembles, including the San Francisco-based Chanticleer and the Theatre of Voices with the singer and conductor Paul Hillier. Finnish cellist Anssi Karttunen has also been a longtime collaborator of Ortiz’s instrumental compositions, together producing a recording subtitled Messages in Tangos Between Argentina and Finland.

Among those who have performed his compositions are the Buenos Aires Philharmonic, the Arditti String Quartet, the Ensemble Contrechamps of Geneva, Music Mobile, Continuum, the Helsinki Cello Ensemble, Les Percussions de Strasbourg, the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and the Theatre of Voices. His music has been heard at international festivals in Salzburg (Aspekte), Geneva (Extasis), Strasbourg (Musica), Havana, Frankfurt, Zurich, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires and Mexico City.

“The music department is delighted to celebrate the many accomplishments of our dear colleague and friend Pablo Ortiz,” writes Nichols. “His tireless work advocating on behalf of the department, the college, and the university has made a deep impact on our community. We’ll miss him, but wish him the best in his richly deserved retirement!”