Miguel del Águila


Miguel del Águila is an Uruguayan-born American composer of contemporary classical music.

Life

Miguel del Águila was born in Montevideo. In 1978, del Águila moved to California, fleeing Uruguay's 1970's repressive military government. 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 introduced his music and distinctive Latin sound to European audiences. In 1989, del Águila introduced his works in New York's Carnegie Recital Hall, and Lukas Foss conducted the U.S. premiere of del Águila's Hexen with the Brooklyn Philharmonic. CDs of his works were released on and KKM-Austria by 1990, works including his Clarinet Concerto, "Herbsttag", and "Hexen". Del Águila returned to the U.S. in 1992, where soon The Los Angeles Times described 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 until 1999. He was resident composer at Chautauqua Institution Summer Festival from 2001 to 2005
Del Águila was among the first group of composers chosen by Meet the Composer and The American Symphony Orchestra League to receive a Music Alive Extended Residency grant, resulting in the 2006 opera Time and Again Barelas, a partnership between the New Mexico Symphony and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. Joanne Sheehy Hoover of the Albuquerque Journal wrote that the opera “displayed his command of an arresting musical vocabulary, marked by a complex yet infectious rhythmic vitality.”
In 2008, del Águila received a "Magnum Opus" commission administered by Meet the Composer, for performances by the Nashville Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Virginia Symphony, and Winnipeg Symphony. The resulting tone poem "The Fall of Cuzco" was premiered by the conducted by Giancarlo Guerrero in November 2009. In 2008–09, del Águila was given the Lancaster Symphony's . His "Choral Suite No. 2" for mixed chorus and orchestra was performed by the symphony, conducted by Stephen Gunzenhauser, in November 2008.
In 2010 del Águila received two Latin Grammy nominations, for the Bridge CD and for his work "Clocks", performed by . The recording received a in 2009. In 2015, he received a third nomination for his "Concierto en Tango", commissioned, premiered and by the Buffalo Philharmonic with cello soloist Roman Mekinulov, conducted by JoAnn Falletta.
Miguel del Águila's works are recorded on Naxos, Dorian, Telarc, New Albion, Albany, Centaur and Eroica among others, and many are published by Peermusic Classical. After many years in Southern California, he now lives in Seattle, WA.

Compositions

Chamber
Chamber works without piano
Dance, film, TV