Cuban/American composer, conductor, music educator, and new music advocate Orlando Jacinto García is Professor of Composition and director of Composition Programs for the School of Music at Florida International University (FIU) in Miami where he was recently named the Director of Graduate Music Programs. He is the founder of the original FIU Electronic Music Studio and the FIU New Music Ensemble and recently founded the NODUS ensemble, a professional chamber group based at FIU dedicated to the presentation of new music.
Born in Havana, Cuba in 1954, García emigrated to the US in 1961 and has resided in Miami since 1977. García's composition teachers include Morton Feldman, David Del Tredici, Dennis Kam, John Corigliano, Donald Erb, and Earle Brown among others. He received his DMA in composition from the University of Miami in Florida in 1984. With more than 90 works in his catalog, García's music is performed throughout the Americas, Asia, and Europe by a variety of distinguished ensembles and soloists. García's music has been performed at numerous festivals and recitals in most of the major capitals of the world.
In 1991-92 García was composer in residence at the new Center for Music and Acoustic Research and Documentation (CEDIAM) of the Universidad Central de Venezuela in Caracas as the result of a Fulbright award. During his 10 months in Caracas as artist/lecturer, he completed 9 works, presented seminars and lectures on various new music related topics, and assisted with the set up of the center.
García was recently awarded a second Fulbright, this time a Senior Lectureship, to support his residency at the Universidad de Salamanca in Spain during the fall of 1996. His residency included the completion of two new works, the presentation of a graduate course on the analysis of 20th century music, the presentation of a variety of lectures, and attendance at premieres of his works in Italy, and throughout Spain. García will be visiting to France, Germany, Holland, Italy, and Spain over the next several years to present lectures, conduct, and attend premieres of new works.
The recipient of a variety of numerous grants and awards including two Cintas Foundation Fellowships, García was recently awarded a summer 1999 residency at the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Center in Italy where he composed a new work for the Orquesta Sinfonica Simon Bolivar of Venezuela to be premiered during the year 2000-2001 in Caracas. During the summer of 2000 he was a Visiting Artisit at the American Academy in Rome where he completed most of the work for a new chamber piece being written for the Juilliard based Continuum Ensemble. Available from Kallisti Music Press, BHE, and North South Editions, his music is recorded on O.O. Discs, Opus One, Albany, CRS, CRI, Capstone, and North/South Records. A highly acclaimed CD of his works featuring performers Joan LaBarbara, Jan Williams, Joseph Celli, and the Gregg Smith Singers was one of O.O. Discs' initial releases. A second CD featuring performers Robert Black, Robert Dick, Paul Hoffman, Anthony de Mare, and Bertram Turetzky and Luis Gomez Imbert with the Orquesta Sinfonica Municipal de Caracas was recently released on the same label. García's music is mostly understated, delicate, sparse, and often includes a chromatic harmonic palette that unfolds very slowly. This slow evolution of material often results in a stasis or freezing of time. His aesthetic concerns are based upon the exploration of subtle musical nuances including the point where we perceive that silence begins and sound ends. The counterpoint between register, timbre, density, and pacing often forms the basis for his music.
Web: http://www.fiu.edu/~garciao/bio.html