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Susan Campos—Fonseca:
Espino Blanco [10th Anniversary]
Release: Aug 29, 2025
Irreverence Group Music [IGM] proudly presents the new acoustic, extended version of Espino Blanco [2025], marking the tenth anniversary of its composition.
Originally written in 2015 as part of Susan Campos—Fonseca’s Butō Meditations cycle, Espino Blanco was first included in the album Minimal Aggression [IGM, 2015] and performed by Costa Rican violist Edmundo Ramírez and American violist Martha Mooke. Conceived for viola and “dark ambient” electronics designed in collaboration with Costa Rica–based sound artist Alejandro Sánchez Núñez, the work now returns in a completely acoustic reimagining alongside young Costa Rican violinist Manuel Loaiza.
Listen to Espino Blanco
Espino Blanco
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Format: Single
Release: August 29, 2025
Catalogue: IGML-010
GTIN/EAN/UPC:
Producer: IGM
Commissioned by Manuel Loaiza -
Manuel Loaiza (Viola)
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Susan Campos—Fonseca
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n/a
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Campos—Fonseca — Espino Blanco
01. Espino Blanco
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Commissioned by Manuel Loaiza
Produced by Irreverence Group Music
Music by Susan Campos—FonsecaManuel Loaiza (Viola)
Recorded & mixed
by Carlos Escalante Macaya at Escuela de Artes Musicales, Universidad de Costa Rica,
San José, Costa Rica
Mastered by Julián De La Chica at IGMLab Music, Brooklyn, NYAlbum Notes by Susan Campos—Fonseca
Artwork/Cover: Bárbara Campos—Fonseca
Photography by Susan Campos
Ⓟ & © IGM 2025
Composer's NOTES
Espino Blanco (2015–2025): Holobiont Sonic Code
By Susan Campos-Fonseca
I composed Espino Blanco in 2015. The work has been brought to life sonically by New York–based Costa Rican violist Edmundo Ramírez, as well as by American violist Martha Mooke. It was first included in my album Minimal Aggression (IGM 2015) and is part of my Butō Meditations. On its tenth anniversary, I return to and revisit this particularly dear work alongside young Costa Rican violinist Manuel Loaiza. The result is this new acoustic, extended version — without the “dark ambient” electronics I designed in 2015 together with Costa Rica–based sound artist Alejandro Sánchez Núñez.
The artwork for this project is by my sister, Bárbara Campos-Fonseca, and is part of her series of embroidered photographs honoring the vitality that resists and dwells in the trees of surviving forests in Spain, England, Switzerland, and Costa Rica. In this case, the cover features a Phanocles costaricensis (also known as Juan palo), a formidable insect — a tree in itself — that lived alongside us during one of our self-managed research residencies in the jungles of Manzanillo, in Costa Rica’s southern Caribbean.
Espino Blanco [2025] is part of a project that Manuel Loaiza and I developed with the support of IGM LAB (USA–Costa Rica). We are working on other pieces that respond to this project, pursuing a relational and animist composition. We have been joined by Costa Rica–based Venezuelan pianist Virginia Villalobos, the University of Costa Rica Symphony Orchestra (OSUCR) conducted by Alejandro Gutiérrez-Mena, New York based Colombian composer, pianist, and multimedia artist Julián De La Chica, and we are honored to have the special collaboration of Ileana Obando, a Cabécar Indigenous leader from Alto Pacuare (Costa Rica), who entrusted us with the sacred healing song TERBË RA I DËKA̱.
For me, composing is a sonic investigation into what makes us the “human species,” and what we deny in the name of that “humanity.” I compose with the purpose of remembering that we are living beings: holobionts. Ten years later, Espino Blanco still holds a sonic code I trust — the score has become a manifestation of the smoking obsidian mirror (Tezcatlipoca) that guides me.
Susan Campos-Fonseca, PhD
Composer, researcher, and sonic creator
Manzanillo, Southern Caribbean of Costa Rica
August 3, 2025
