Miguel del Águila
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Name
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Miguel del Águila
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Bio
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Three-time Grammy-nominated American composer Miguel del Aguila is among the most distinctive and highly regarded composers of his generation, with over 120 works that couple drama and driving rhythm with nostalgic nods to his South American roots. His music, recorded in 45 CDs, has been hailed as “brilliant and witty” (The New York Times), “sonically dazzling” (Los Angeles Times), and “exquisitely imaginative” (Fanfare).
Aguila has been commissioned or performed by over 100 orchestras including the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the Buffalo Philharmonic, the symphonies of Toronto, Nashville, Seattle, Albany, San Antonio, Long Beach, and Virginia, and the Welsh BBC; the Philharmonic Orchestras of Heidelberg, Kiev and Odessa; the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, Brandenburgisches Staatsorchester, and the Sinfónica Nacional and Filarmónica de México; by ensembles such as Cuarteto Latinoamericano, Windscape, New Juilliard Ensemble, Camerata de las Americas, Imani Winds, Fifth House Ensemble, and the Pacifica and Verona Quartets. He has collaborated with conductors such as JoAnn Falletta, Giancarlo Guerrero, Marin Alsop, Carlos Miguel Prieto, Gerard Schwarz, David Alan Miller, Lukas Foss, Eckart Preu, and Ken Masur; and with soloists Manuel Barrueco and Richard Stoltzman among many others.
He has received a Kennedy Center Friedheim Award and both a Music Alive Award and a Magnum Opus/Kathryn Gould Award from New Music USA. He was Lancaster Symphony’s 2009 Composer of the Year, and has won grants from the Copland and Argosy Foundations.
Born in Uruguay in 1957, Aguila received musical training there, and at the conservatories of San Francisco and Vienna. After winning acclaim as pianist and composer in Vienna, he re-established himself in the U.S. in 1989 with a program of piano music at Carnegie Recital Hall and the premiere of Hexen by the Brooklyn Philharmonic conducted by Lukas Foss. He returned to California in 1992; soon thereafter the LA Times called him “one of the West Coast’s most promising young composers”.
A sought-after lecturer, curator and educator, Aguila is a frequent competition jurist and guest composer. He is 2020 Composer in Residence with Orchestra de las Americas and with Festival Alfredo de Saint Malo. His music is published by Peermusic Classical and Theodore Presser, and is self-published
