Eduardo Alonso-Crespo - Biography

Biography

Argentine composer and conductor Eduardo Alonso-Crespo was born in San Miguel de Tucumán in 1956, and grew up in the neighboring city of Salta, in Northwestern Argentina. He received his early musical training from Elizabeth Ocaña de García in Salta, and his musical college education and degree at the School of Musical Arts of the National University of Tucumán. At this same university he also received a Civil Engineer degree. He later came to the United States through a Fulbright Grant and obtained his Master degree at Carnegie Mellon University, after studying with maestros Lukas Foss, Leonardo Balada and Samuel Jones. Further training included seminars and workshops with maestros Max Rudolf, Gunther Schuller, Julio Lazarte and Henry Holt.

Besides composing an important corpus of chamber and symphonic music, he has produced a number of works for the stage; among them the ballet Medea (staged in 1985), the incidental music for Macbeth, winner of the 1994 Iris Marga Award in Argentina for best original score for drama and staged in 1994, the opera Putzi (staged in 2004), based on an anecdote from Franz Liszt's life, and the opera Juana, la loca (staged in 1991), composed for the 500 Anniversary of the Discovery of America. In 1986 he was invited to present an opera and a ballet - simultaneously - for the First Buenos Aires Summer Festival and in that same year he received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts of Argentina to compose his second opera. More recently, in 2006, his First Symphony was chosen as mandatory work for the VIII International Course for Conductors of the Concepción Symphony Orchestra in Chile.

His works have been performed in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Chile, Bolivia, Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina, China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Portugal, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain and France, and at prestigious locations including the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Carnegie Recital Hall in New York, the Madeleine Church in Paris, the De Doelen Grand Hall in Rotterdam, the Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas, the Teatro La Fenice in Venice and the Queluz Royal Palace in Lisbon.

Due to the chronological inversion of the artistic seasons between the Northern and Southern hemispheres, Alonso-Crespo served as Music Director of the Tucumán Symphony Orchestra in Argentina and Music Director of the Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble in the U.S.A. for twelve years (1989–2000). Past positions as a conductor also include Principal Guest Conductor and Composer in Residence of the Salta Symphony Orchestra (Argentina), Music Director of the Orquesta Estable de Tucumán, the orchestra of the Tucumán Opera and Ballet Theatre (Argentina), Resident Conductor at Carnegie Mellon University, Associate Conductor of the Carnegie Mellon Philharmonic, Assistant Conductor of the Pittsburgh Civic Orchestra and Music Director of the Carnegie Mellon Wind Ensemble (U.S.A.) In 1998 he made his debut at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires while more recent conducting activities comprise leading the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville, Spain, for the Naxos label.