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Biography
Ecuadorian composer (Quito, 1954). His father being a GP in the army he spent his early childhood in different regions of Ecuador.
By the age of 12 he settled in Quito where he studied piano and composition at the Conservatorio Nacional. When he was 17 he won a piano scholarship to study at the Tchaikovsky Conservatoire in Moscow. ..he turned it down : too far away from home and a bit too brisk for his young Ecuadorian bones. Instead he carried out his studies of music in Quito while graduating in Law (just as grand-dad before him and for the reason that music is nothing but a pleasant past-time). In 1979, however, he went to Paris to carry on studying music, thanks to a French Government scholarship. The first year he worked as assistant of the composer Jose Berghmans. He studied at the Ecole Normale de Musique and also attended composition and musique concrete courses at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris and at the CERM in Metz. He attended several seminars at the IRCAM, as well as a series of lectures by Luciano Berio at the Centre Acanthes, Aix-en Provence in 1983. That same year he co-founded the Ensemble "Denojours". He received a UNESCO scholarship to write music. In 1984 travels to Panama and then, he went back to Quito for what he thought would only be a one-month holiday... he stayed 4 years! He then taught at the Quito Conservatoire and founded the magazine Opus (1986-89) of which he was also the editor. In Dec 1989 he flew off to London , just for eight months... somehow he is still there! In 1998-99 he managed to get away for a year in Rome. He now feels like going to China but the language is a bit of a barrier! His travelling all the time, ever since he was a child, helps to understand his music. Arturo has composed piano, chamber, electroacoustic, orchestral and choral music. |
