The long journey of discarded masks starts in their form as solid waste on land. It continues over weeks and months with billions of masks wending their way from land through urban and rural drainage systems or leaching into groundwater, with this wave of solid and chemical pollution eventually flowing into the earth’s watersheds – rivers, streams, lakes and oceans.

Tragically, these epic individual journeys have already collectively desposited several billion tons of toxic waste in the world’s oceans.

The scale of these historic journeys from land to sea cries out for its own soundtrack to help us visualize the process by which it is happening. Dead Mask musical directors Fernanda Santoyo and Macarena Palazuelos have taken up this challenge.

Fernanda is an emerging global opera star and scholar-historian who also has a passion for traditional Mexican ranchera. Her new book on the history of the castrati singers of medieval and Renaissance Italy and their direct link as the forebears of the modern mezzo-soprano voice will publish in 2023.

A noted, classically trained pianist and composer, Macarena has produced and released two albums of solo piano compositions and is working on a third that will be released in early 2023.

Fernanda and Macarena are working together to create a series of interrelated compositions that give musical expression to the many steps on the lengthy journey of discarded masks to the ocean.

Their performance of these songs will be woven into a Dead Mask-Living Oceans Concerto and made available for download on Apple Music and Spotify.