Miguel del Aguila
Musician in Los Angeles, California
COMPOSER
www.migueldelaguila.com
Three-time Grammy nominated American composer Miguel del Aguila was born 1957 in Montevideo, Uruguay. In more than 130 works that couple drama and driving rhythm with nostalgic nods to his South American roots, he has established himself as one of the most distinctive and highly regarded composers of his generation. His music has been performed by some 100 orchestras, by thousands of ensembles and soloists, and recorded on 56 CDs. His music receives over 200 live performances yearly worldwide.
His training and early professional experience took place in both the U.S. and Europe. After graduating from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music he traveled to Vienna, where he studied at the Hochschule für Musik and Konservatorium. Early premieres of his works in Vienna’s Musikverein, Konzerthaus and Bösendorfer halls won him praise from audiences and press who described his music as “dancing with incendiary rhythms,” with “near to obsessive vitality" (Wiener Zeitung). While still living in Vienna, he introduced his piano works in New York’s Carnegie Recital Hall. Days later, Lukas Foss led the U.S. premiere of Hexen with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. CDs containing five of his works were released on KKM-Austria and Albany Records in 1989 and 1990.
in 1992, he returned to Los Angeles where Los Angeles Times weocomed him as "one of the West Coast's most promising and enterprising young composers." He received the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1995, and was music director of Ojai Camerata from 1996 to 1999. In the 1990s his works were first performed at Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Opera House, and in most European capitals. From 2001 to 2004 del Aguila was Resident Composer at the Chautauqua Music Festival. In 2005 he began a two-year Composer in Residence position with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, through a Meet the Composer/Music Alive Award. His residency culminated in the fully-staged premiere of his third opera Time and Again Barelas, commemorating Albuquerque’s tricentennial. He was honored with a Meet the Composer Magnum Opus/Kathryn Gould Award in 2008, resulting in the orchestral tone poem The Fall of Cuzco, which has been performed by The Buffalo Philharmonic, and by Nashville, Virginia, Sao Paulo State, and Winnipeg symphony orchestras. He received the Lancaster Symphony Composer of the Year Award 2009.