Alumni Carlos Bandera Wins American Composers Orchestra Commission

Carlos Bandera, a 2015 graduate of the Cali School, won the American Composers Orchestra (ACO) 2018 Underwood Commission, a $15,000 commission for a work to be premiered by ACO in a future season. Chosen from six finalists during ACO’s 27th Underwood New Music Readings in June, Bandera won the top prize with his work Lux in Tenebris.

Speaking about the work, ACO Artistic Director Derek Bermel said: “Carlos Bandera’s orchestral writing speaks with clarity and purpose. We were impressed by the expansive, colorful landscape in his tone poem Lux in Tenebris and look forward with great enthusiasm to his new work for ACO.”

Carlos Bandera is a composer who is fascinated by musical architecture and by the music of the past. His recent music explores these fascinations, often by placing a musical quotation, be it a phrase, scale, or sonority, within dense microtonal textures.

Carlos’s music has been performed in the Faroe Islands, Scotland, Uzbekistan, China, and several spaces in the US, including Stern Auditorium, Carnegie Hall. In addition presenting his work at the American Composer Orchestra’s Readings this year, he attended CULTIVATE, where his piece Spirare was premiered, as well as Time of Music in Viitasaari, Finland, where he studied with Chaya Czernowin. Carlos earned his Bachelor of Music degree in Music Theory and Composition from the Cali School of Music, where he studied with Elizabeth Brown, Dean Drummond, and Marcos Balter. He received his Master of Music degree in Composition in 2017 from the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, where he participated in masterclasses with Christopher Rouse and Georg Friedrich Haas and studied privately with Kevin Puts.