Recipient of the BMI Composer Award and the ASCAP Foundation Morton Gould Young Composer Award, El Onceavo Cielo (The Eleventh Heaven) draws its title from the eleventh level of the Nahua heavens: the realm of Xiuhtecuhtli, god of fire and time. This heaven is described as “the red sky full of rays where the dying Sun and twilight reside.”

Referencing the first work in Esteban Benzecry’s Rituales Amerindios—a piece inspired by the Aztec god Ehecatl—The Eleventh Heaven explores Xiuhtecuhtli’s role in the Nahua myth of creation as depicted in the Fejérváry-Mayer Codex, a pre-Hispanic sacred manuscript. Notably, the codex depicts the four cardinal directions in a cross, along with sacred trees and Lords of the Night arranged around Xiuhtecuhtli at its center. In his hand, the god holds the “fire of creation”—the cosmic axis that embodies time itself, and binds the thirteen heavens, the eight underworlds, and the earthly plane together—the primordial fire through which he sets the universe into motion.

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Known as the “Old God,” Xiuhtecuhtli occupied a central place in Mesoamerican religion, yet his role and meaning transformed upon contact with European beliefs and traditions. The Eleventh Heaven reflects on this transformation questioning memorability and embracing the transfigurative, burning force of time. Like Xiuhtecuhtli himself, not even gods, beliefs, or deities can escape it: across centuries, they change, acquire new meanings, merge with other traditions, and some eventually fade.

Through the image of Xiuhtecuhtli and the creative fire he embodies, the piece confronts the impermanence of time, beliefs, gods, and ultimately of music itself.