Chiquero

Chiquero is a word we use to describe a place where things pile up without any apparent order. It’s a messy, chaotic space

Chiquero

2025, Composition

Commissioned by: 4tet Laboratoire

Where I grew up, chiquero is a word we use to describe a place where things pile up without any apparent order. It’s a messy, chaotic space — it could be a room, a closet, or, in this case, this piece for quartet.

This work is precisely that: a collection of ideas brought together without any obvious
logical structure. While composing it, my aim was to shape and organize a set of musical and sonic materials I had been accumulating over time — ideas that at first didn’t seem like they could coexist in the same space.

In Chiquero I explore a variety of materials and timbres; I use unconventional instruments alongside more familiar ones, fragment grooves that break apart and reconfigure, and work with rhythms I grew up with, metric layering, and other resources.

All of this intertwines to give shape to this piece: a sonic chiquero where heterogeneous
elements find their own kind of order

For 4tet Laboratoire
Photo by: La Pataconera