Mexican composer and current ricordilab winner Diana Syrse celebrates Mexico City in a new work for orchestra, in which she invites the audience on a sonic walk through the different neighbourhoods and specific sounds of this extraordinary cosmopolitan city.

Ciudad de México will be premiered in July 2023 by commissioner Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería under the baton of artistic director and conductor Carlos Miguel Prieto at a festival within Mexico City as part of their 45th anniversary celebration.

¡estamos impacientes por que llegue el concierto y esperamos verle allí!

About Ciudad de México

Ciudad de México is inspired by the city, its sounds, its rhythm of life, its constant mix of intertwined stories, its places, its flavors and its mixed roots. The work begins by describing a massive concrete and metal monster. I imagine it as a giant waking up in the morning and walking with legs of buildings and a subway, people, buses and cars as its veins, its eyes, a thousand windows like those found in the hills of Iztapalapa. A steady rhythm is heard that begins to accelerate. In the second part I develop ideas that come from neighborhoods, colonies or avenues in particular. I imagine myself in a car driving through Tlalpan, I write how the voice of the avenue would sound if it spoke and I hear noisy sounds, a combination of machines, engines, wind, voices, thousands of footsteps and plastic sticking to concrete.


In CDMX one feels an impressive energy of living that carries every human being that walks through its skin of cement and dry soil. I write thinking of Coyoacán and its alameda, Churubusco and its streets, Tepito and its market, Reforma and its monuments, Xicoténcatl park and every memory I have in some places of this city. A city seen from a visceral feeling that gives the public a vibrant music, with indigenous roots, modern, surreal, cosmopolitan and colorful. This work is dedicated to and inspired by the musical work of my father Fernando Valdés and is written especially for the Orquesta Sinfónica de Minería conducted by Carlos Miguel Prieto.

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