Miguel del Aguila
Festival Guest Composer 2016, 2019
Three-time Grammy nominated American composer Miguel del Aguila was born 1957 in Montevideo, Uruguay. In more than 120 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 worldwide by some 60 orchestras, by thousands of ensembles and soloists, and recorded on 45 CDs.
He received the prestigious Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1995, and was music director of Ojai Camerata 1996 to 1999. In the 1990s his works were first performed at Lincoln Center, London’s Royal Opera House, and in Moscow, Vienna, Zurich, Budapest, Prague, Tokyo, and Rome. From 2001 to 2004 del Aguila was Resident Composer at the Chautauqua Music Festival, where he performed as pianist and contributed several new works each year. In 2005 he began a two-year Composer in Residence position with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, made possible by 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, as well as awards from The Copland Foundation and the Argosy Foundation among others.
In 2010 he was honored with two Latin Grammy nominations, for the CD Salón Buenos Aires (five chamber works on Bridge Records) and for the composition Clocks from that album. In 2015 he received a third Grammy nomination for his cello concerto: Concierto en Tango which, only a year after its premiere has already been scheduled 15 orchestra performances worldwide.