WORCESTER  — A renown composer from Argentina who also works as a music professor at Holy Cross received a 2021 Latin GRAMMY Award nomination.

Loyola Professor of Music Osvaldo Golijov was nominated in the “best classical contemporary composition” category in this year’s Latin GRAMMY’s for a song cycle he wrote called Falling Out of Time. Golijiov is a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellow at Holy Cross who has been teaching at the college since 1991.

Falling Out of Time is named after a novel written by award-winning author David Grossman. The book is about the grief experienced following the loss of a child. According to a news release from Holy Cross, Grossman’s book was “originally written in Hebrew and described as half-folktale and half novel-in verse.”

Expansive, haunting and at times meditative, Golijov’s musical interpretation of Grossman’s novel was composed for the Silkroad Ensemble during their three-year residency at Holy Cross that began in 2017.

“This recognition for Falling Out of Time is especially meaningful for me, because the piece was made for and with my friends of Silkroad, and we created it and premiered it here at home, at Holy Cross,” Golijov said.

The Silkroad Ensemble are a Grammy Award winning musical collective created by famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma.  The ensemble is named after The Silk Road, a network of trade routes that connected China with the Middle East and Europe from the 2nd century BC to the 18th century. 

Yo-Yo Ma created the Silkroad Ensemble in 1998 by bringing together musicians from the nations around the Silk Road. It was an experiment in cultural collaboration. 

According to a release from Holy Cross, “Golijiov is considered one of the most important contemporary classical composers of our time.” One of his most famous pieces “La Pasión según San Marcos,” released in 2000, was described as “A millennial work of genius. A magnificent triumph” by The New York Times.