#75 – December 28, 2020

ROBERTO SIERRA (1953)

OCTETO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxYexmrj2Do

Octeto, by Puerto Rican composer Roberto Sierra is our Composition of the Week.

Written in 2003, Octeto has a classical instrumentation (0222/2000) and a duration of 10 minutes.

It is cast in nine short movements:

  1. Obertura
  2. Salseando
  3. Ecos
  4. Danzante
  5. Tonos
  6. Columnas
  7. Colores
  8. Escalas y algunos arpegios
  9. Finale

 

Octeto is very representative of Sierra’s style “fresh and personal melodic lines with sparkling harmonies and striking rhythms” American Academy of Arts and Letters.

For more than three decades, the works of Roberto Sierra have been part of the repertoire of many of the leading orchestras, ensembles and festivals in the USA and Europe. Many of the major American and European orchestras and international ensembles have commissioned and performed his works. Among those ensembles are the orchestras of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, New Mexico, Houston, Minnesota, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio and Phoenix, as well as the American Composers Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the Tonhalle Orchestra of Zurich, the Spanish orchestras of Madrid, Galicia, Castilla y León, Barcelona, Continuum, St. Lawrence String Quartet, Opus One, and others.

In 2017 he was awarded the Tomás Luis de Victoria Prize, the highest honor given in Spain to a composer of Spanish or Latin American origin. In 2003 he was awarded the Academy Award in Music by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. In 2010 he was elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Roberto Sierra was born in 1953 in Vega Baja, Puerto Rico, and studied composition both in Puerto Rico and Europe, where one his teachers was György Ligeti at the Hochschule für Musik in Hamburg, Germany. The works of Roberto Sierra are published principally by Subito Music Publishing (ASCAP).

More on Roberto Sierra

https://www.robertosierra.com