Guzmán Calzada Llorente is a Uruguayan composer and guitarist who finds unexpected connections between the music of the past and the present, and between seemingly unrelated musical traditions.

Coming from a family of architects, he thinks about old material the way an architect might think about a ruin—something you don't restore, but build on top of, letting old and new sit side by side in open contrast. That instinct runs through everything he does, from the vibrant rhythms of cumbia to Renaissance polyphony and contemporary sound art.

Guzmán holds a bachelor's degree in Music Composition from the Universidad de la República, Uruguay, and a master's degree in Sonology from the Royal Conservatoire of The Hague (The Netherlands), where he was later a Research Associate.

He is a founding member of Cumbia Club, whose concerts across South America have made them one of the Uruguay’s most visible bands, and in the Netherlands he was co-director of the early music ensemble Miscelánea.

His work has been presented at festivals and institutions including Festival Dag in de Branding (where he was composer-in-residence for two years), Transformation of the Audible, Earpot, OPENING – International Soundart Festival, Monteaudio, the Orpheus Doctoral Conference, and the 4th International Csound Conference, among others.

He also created a sound sculpture commissioned by the Cologne-based collective KOLLEKTIV 3:6 KÖLN, took part in a sound art project about the Max Planck Institute's research vessel RV Sonne, and designed the sound for The Hy Project by Toyota Uruguay and The Electric Factory, awarded a silver Cannes Lion in Radio and Audio.