38 Forever Surrey / anniversary issue
MEET OUR ALUMNI award-winners
Congratulations to the winners of the Vice-Chancellor’s Alumni Awards for 2016 which honour former students who have made an outstanding contribution in their field or to society in the past three years.
In our 50th anniversary year Professor Max Lu introduced four new award categories to further recognise the tremendous impact our alumni have around the world.
Professor Lu said: “It is truly inspiring to learn of the achievements of so many of our alumni who have excelled in their professional lives, enjoyed entrepreneurial success or significantly given back to society.”
Lifetime Achievement Award:
Odaline de la Martinez MMus Music 1977
The strains of Afro-Cuban music lulled conductor and composer Odaline de la Martinez to sleep as a child in her native Cuba and her love for the genre has been an inspiration throughout her career.
“I love Afro-Cuban music,” she said. “It brings back memories of my childhood, falling asleep to the drumming and waking up when it stopped in the middle of the night. It has influenced me greatly.”
Odaline has worked with orchestras across the world, recorded extensively and conducted repertoire from Mozart symphonies to the latest contemporary music, but her early musical heritage continues to motivate her.
Next year, her complete Slavery Opera Trilogy will be premiered at the London Festival of American Music. Odaline drew on her native Cuba’s history for the piece - until the late 1800s, more than one million African slaves were imported to the island’s sugar plantations.
Odaline is passionate about showcasing the work and talent of women composers across the world, and her company Lontano, a London-based contemporary music ensemble, has been pivotal in making the work of female artists more widely known. She has blazed her own musical trail, becoming, in 1984, the first woman to conduct a complete BBC prom at the Royal Albert Hall.
Odaline may have leſt Cuba for America when she was 11 (aſter the Bay of Pigs Invasion) and since lived in the UK for 40 years, but her native country still inspires her. “I have one more opera in me and it will be about Cuba. I want to tell the story of the people who tried to escape to the US in boats and raſts, not always succeeding.”
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