As a classical musician of color, Hector Armienta has made a living creating his own opportunities. The COVID pandemic was his newest hurdle. And he came up with an unexpected solution: an animated opera for the digital age.
The fact that Hector made an unconventional opera during the pandemic isn’t totally surprising. After all, his journey to classical music began in a somewhat unexpected place: the local grocery store.
“They actually had the records, LPs, as you walked in, right next to the sort of candies and everything…And I would just buy them as I was learning the piano,” he remembered, chuckling.
This was in the 1970s in the MacArthur Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. His grocery store introduction was nurtured by the free music classes offered at his local public school – programs he told me he just doesn’t see anymore, especially in communities of color.
By middle school, Hector knew he wanted to be a composer. He eventually headed up north to San Francisco for graduate school and tried to break into the classical music scene – shopping around his compositions for residencies and grants. Hector identifies as Chicano and he says it wasn’t easy.
He explained, “Back then, even before 2008, you didn’t see work composed by Latino or Latina composers or by Black composers or Asian, Asian-American composers. It just was non-existent.”
By the time his first major piece was staged, Hector had figured out that if he wanted to ensure sustained opportunities for himself and other Latinx artists, he’d have to create his own space. In 2008, Hector founded Opera Cultura in San Jose.
The community, Hector says, was ready for a Latino opera company.
“In San Jose, there’s a lot of different communities. And the Latino community is pretty large…And there are different generations, you have generations of Latinos who have been there since the 1800s, you know, and then you have, recent people who’ve recently come from…