Wilfrido Terrazas (Camargo, 1974) is a Mexican flutist active since the early 1990s, whose career spans performance, commissioning, improvisation, composition and pedagogy. His work focuses on finding points of convergence between notated and improvised music, and in exploring innovative approaches to collaboration and collective creation. He is a founding member and Herald of the Mexico City-based improvisation collective Generación Espontánea since 2006. As an interpreter, Wilfrido has performed over 380 world premieres, and has been a member of Liminar ensemble since 2012. As a composer, his main interest is the exploration of dialogues between composition, improvisation and performance. As such, he has written over 60 works for diverse instrumental forces. Other current projects include Filera, Escudo (Torre), Spinystar, and the Wilfrido Terrazas Sea Quintet. Since 2014, Wilfrido has been co-curator of the Semana Internacional de Improvisación, a week-long festival dedicated to improvised music in Ensenada.
Wilfrido has been a committed educator since his adolescence. In 2017, he was appointed Assistant Professor of Music at the University of California, San Diego. Prior to his appointment at UCSD, he taught at the Conservatorio de las Rosas in Morelia and at the Escuela Superior de Música in Mexico City. He is also in demand as a coach and workshop leader throughout Mexico.
Wilfrido has presented his work in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bolivia, Canada, Colombia, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Moldova, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, United States, Venezuela, and in over 40 cities in his native country. He has obtained support from the National Fund for the Arts and Culture (FONCA) and several other Mexican institutions, has been an artist in residence at Omi International Arts Center (Ghent, NY), Atlantic Center for the Arts (New Smyrna, FL) and Ionion Center for the Arts and Culture (Kefalonia, Greece); and participated in the recording of more than 40 albums, six of them as a soloist or leader: Open Cages (Umor, 2007), Bóreas (Shival/CONARTE 2010), Bug/ge/d (Mandorla, 2010), Pirate Songs (Ápice, 2018), Be Prepared (Ápice, 2019) and Ítaca (Cero Records, 2020). Among his longtime collaborators are composers Ignacio Baca Lobera, Thanos Chrysakis, Edgar Guzmán, Nickos Harizanos, Iván Naranjo and Mauricio Rodríguez; cellist Natalia Pérez Turner, vocalist and intermedia artist Carmina Escobar, multimedia artist Yair López and poets Nuria Manzur and Ronnie Yates. Recent collaborations include recording with Roscoe Mitchell and playing with Angélica Castelló, Andrew Drury, Vinny Golia, Stephanie Griffin, Katt Hernandez, Lisa Mezzacappa and Wade Matthews.
Wilfrido Terrazas studied music initially in Baja California and California. He later graduated from the Conservatorio de las Rosas. Among his most influential mentors are Damian Bursill-Hall, Tom Corona, John Fonville, Roscoe Mitchell, Guillermo Portillo, Germán Romero and Ernesto Rosas. Wilfrido grew up in Ensenada, and, after been based in Mexico City for over 14 years, he moved to San Diego, California, in 2017.