Faculty

Professor Rafael Aponte Ledeé
In 1957 he arrived in Madrid to study composition with Cristóbal Halffter at the Royal Conservatory of that capital, where he remained until 1964, when he obtained the title of Composer. The following year and through a scholarship, he entered the Latin American Center for Higher Musical Studies in Buenos Aires, to carry out postgraduate studies with Alberto Ginastera, Gerardo Gandini and Earle Brown, among others. In 1968, upon returning to Puerto Rico, he began teaching at the Conservatory of Music, and in collaboration with Francis Schwartz, he founded the group Fluxus in San Juan for the dissemination of new music. Since 1981 he has directed the Latin American Foundation for Contemporary Music, through which he has organized more than a hundred concerts of all types of music, giving the general public the opportunity to listen to artists from various backgrounds. After practicing various styles and aesthetic postures - from tonal to electroacoustic; passing through dodecaphonism, open composition and unconventional writing – starting in 1986 he began to handle quotes from established composers both from the past and the present, mixing them with rhythmic procedures culled from Caribbean and urban popular music (guaracha, son, bolero , etc.). Aponte – Ledée has participated in festivals in Buenos Aires, Washington, Madrid, Maracaibo, San Juan, Alicante, León, New York, El Salvador; where many of his works have been performed. He is a founding member of the Latin American College of Art Music Composers and SGAE. Some works: 10 Spanish popular songs; Theme and six differences, for piano; Dialogues, for flute and viola; Elegy, for chamber orchestra; Impulses, for orchestra; A paper bird on the chest, for chamber ensemble; Omen of dead birds, for actor and film; Tentatives, for violin, chamber orchestra and tape; The incomplete round, for film music; Beware of Falling Angels, for musique concrete; The palace in shadows, for orchestra; Of so many shadows, for piano; Stories by Daniel Santos, for orchestra; Three bagatelles, for guitar; The Only Friend, cantata for soprano, alto, tenor, bass and orchestra; Auleas, for solo clarinet; Two stories for orchestra; The Girl in the Golden Panties, for orchestra; Something floats above the palladium; Others for María Teresa, for harpsichord; Pandora's eggs; Evening, unicorn, dovecote; Hush child, hush.

Professor Leonardo Egúrbida
Diploma. Royal Conservatory of Music of Madrid, Spain. He studied with Regino Sáinz de la Maza and Alirio Díaz. Recitals at the UPR, the Ponce Museum of Art, in New York at the Carnegie Recital Hall, in Venezuela, Cuba, Santo Domingo and Mexico. He has been a soloist with the OSPR and the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, and first chair of the Casals Festival Orchestra. He has recorded albums and published original music and transcriptions with the ICP. He has participated as a jury in international competitions in Martinique, Cuba and Puerto Rico. He received honorable mentions in the End of Degree Competition in Madrid and in the Alirio Díaz Competition in Venezuela. He is part of the Batista-Egúrbida Duo, and is co-founder of the Tavárez Classical Trio and the First Classical Guitar Festival of Puerto Rico. He has been honored with the dedication of compositions by Amaury Veray, Luis Antonio Ramírez and Ernesto Cordero.

Professor Nellie García de Justicia
BM, CMPR; MA and doctoral courses at New York University. She taught classical ballet for twenty years and was president of the Dance Teachers Association. She was founder and Director of the Musical Education Department of the CMPR. He attended seminars and conferences of the International Society of Music Education and the National Composers Conference. She has been a Puerto Rican delegate to the National Chapter of the National Alliance for the Arts at the Kennedy Center. In 1987 he won first prize in the Alpha Delta Kappa Sorority contest. In 1991 she was a speaker at the Congress of Women's Creation of the Hispanic World with the essay Peripecias de Ita, published in the form of a didactic book by the Hougton Mifflin publishing house. He published numerous articles in the country's newspapers and in the Magazine of the Institute of Culture of Puerto Rico. She retired in 1992 and in 2004 she was named Professor Emeritus of the CMPR. “Doña Nellie” died in 2013.

Professor Cecilia Negrón de Talavera
Disciple of Jesús María Sanromá, Cecilia M. de Negrón, Elisa Tavárez and Luis Galve. For many years she was a pianist for the CMPR Choir and a collaborator with the OSPR. He did extensive work as an accompanist for singers in art song recitals. As a member of the Talavera-Hutchinson Duo, he performed at universities, schools, cultural centers, museums and concert halls in Puerto Rico, Washington DC, Santo Domingo and Santa Cruz. For twelve years he was in charge of musical activities for the Arlequín Children's Theater Society. He recorded Puerto Rican music for the ICP label. In 2012, the Cecilia Talavera Wing of the new Academic Building of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music was named in her honor.

"Doña Ceci" died in 2019.

Dr. Alba Franco-Cancel
Puerto Rican soprano Dr. Alba Franco-Cancel is internationally celebrated for her “pure,” “brilliant,” and “bell-like” sound, and her “magnificent stage presence” and “acting skills” on both the operatic and concert stages. Her most recent appearances include Soloist in Mozart’s Mass in C minor with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra; Giannetta with Livermore Valley Opera; Grittly (Le 66) with Mission Opera; Soloist in Vaughan Williams’ Dona Nobis Pacem with the San Luis Obispo Chorale; Guest Artist with the Arequipa Symphony Orchestra, Peru; and her Mexican debut with ÓperaMaya’s “Aún más fuerte” tour. Other appearances include her European debut as Christine in The Phantom of the Opera; Sarah (La Llorona) with Opera Cultura; Lucinda (Dark Sisters) with Opera Fayetteville; Queen of the Night with Opera San Luis Obispo; Valencienne with Pacific Opera Project; Barbarina with Livermore Valley Opera; Despina with Opera Neo; the title role in the Mariachi Opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna; and a guest artist with St. George Opera.

Awards he has received include James Toland Competition Semifinalist; Two-time American Prize Competition finalist; Illinois Opera House Enthusiasts Award; Bella Voice Award from the Bel Canto Foundation; Classical Singers Magazine Competition Finalist; the MET Auditions Audience Award; and winner of the MundoArts Latin American art song competition; among others.

Franco-Cancel has a PhD in Voice from the University of Missouri Conservatory of Music, where his area of specialty was Latin American and Iberian Art Song; and is certified by the University of Utah as a specialist in vocology, the science and practice of professional voice habilitation. She is currently an Assistant Professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, as well as a faculty member at Cuesta College in California.

Website: albafrancocancel.com

afranco@cmpr.edu

Professor William Rivera
Professor William Rivera Ortiz is a professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he serves as director of the Master's Program in Choral Studies and heads the Voice Department. He has taught graduate courses in choral literature, seminars, and choral conducting, and at the bachelor's level in basic and choral conducting, choral education for teachers, music theory, vocal technique, and composition seminars, among others. He directs the Conservatory Choir and the Concert Choir, with which he has participated in choral festivals in Puerto Rico, the United States, and Italy.

Its choirs have participated in the seasons of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Casals Festival, the Opera Workshop of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, Puerto Rico Opera, the Puerto Rican Zarzuela and Operetta Foundation, the Inter-American Festival of the Arts , the “Arturo Somohano” Philharmonic Orchestra of Puerto Rico, Culturarte of Puerto Rico and the Bayamón Symphony Orchestra.

During the years 1992 to 1995, he was director of the Puerto Rican Girls' School Choir and the Disciples of Christ Academy Choir (secondary level) Bayamón, with which he won first prize at the 1995 Musicfest held in Orlando, Florida, USA. In 1999, he founded the Ars Vocalis Choir with which he has performed at various choral festivals in Austria, Italy, the United States, the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland and Puerto Rico. In addition to his concerts and special activities, he carried out his national tour “Al son de mi voz” sponsored by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. In March 2008, Ars Vocalis won first prize in the mixed choir category at the 19th edition of the Concorso Internazionale di Canto Corale held in Verona, Italy. In 2003, he was director of the Choir of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and taught the choral conducting course for five years at said institution. Since 2004, he has directed the National Choir of Puerto Rico with which he has presented community concerts, Christmas concerts, in the Family Concert Series of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and in the Christmas Concerts of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. In 2005, he participated in the International Choir Festival in Vienna, Austria and in 2012, a concert tour in Montreal and Quebec, Canada.

He graduated Magna cum Laude from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He studied under the tutelage of Masters Roselín Pabón, Ángel Mattos and Carmen Acevedo. In 1987, he obtained a Master of Music with a specialty in Choral Conducting from Temple University, where he studied with the distinguished choir director Alan Harler. In 1995, the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida awarded him a scholarship to study for a Doctorate in Musical Arts with a specialty in choral direction and literature, and vocal pedagogy. There he studied with professors Jo-Michael Scheibe and Donald Oglesby. In 1996, he represented the University by directing the choral repertoire sessions at the American Choral Directors Association Regional Convention in Norfolk, Virginia. She was in charge of the Chamber Choir, the Women's Choir, taught the Choral Conducting course at the high school level, prepared the choirs for the Opera Workshop and coordinated the Holiday Dinners of the Choral Program. He was Assistant Director of the University Concert Choir and the Collegium Musicum of the Miami Bach Society.

Professor Rivera participated as a guest in workshops, seminars, forums and conventions in and outside Puerto Rico. In 2012, he was invited to join the jury for the International Choral Singing Competition in Verona, Italy. By 1991, he was President of the Association of Choirs of Puerto Rico. He has served as a jury in several choral competitions in our country. Since 1989, he has been Director of the Choir of the Third Christian Church “Disciples of Christ” in Sierra Linda, Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Additionally, he is a member of the International Federation of Choral Music, the Puerto Rico Choral Association, the American Choral Directors Association and Chorus America. His biography has been published in “Who's who in Choral Music”.

William.Rivera@cmpr.edu

Prof. Ilca López
Mezzo-soprano and professor Ilca López has had a distinguished career as an opera performer and has also made significant forays into art song and chamber music. Her repertoire includes leading mezzo roles in Carmen, Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Les contes d'Hoffmann, Il barbiere di Siviglia, Der Rosekavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, Il turco in Italia, Orfeo ed Euridice, Hansel and Gretel, Le nozze di Figaro, La finta giardiniera, Die Fledermaus, Suor Angelica, among many others. For her Carmen, she has been praised as "the perfect singer-actress with a brilliant and extraordinarily flexible voice." López began her career at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires and has also sung in Latin America in Chile, Mexico, San Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Nicaragua. From the Teatro Colón, she moved to Europe, where she settled in Würzburg, Germany, for nine years. She also sang a large part of her operatic repertoire in Spain, Austria, France, and Switzerland. Reviews of her performances with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Casals Festival highlight her as one of the finest singers of her generation.

In recent years he has ventured into what is known as crossover, he has offered countless eclectic concerts where he sings from Vivaldi to Piazzolla, passing through Kurt Weill, Cole Porter, Gershwin, Chabuca Granda, Sylvia Rexach and other prominent composers. His Cabaret Songs concerts where he sings the songs of Weimar Germany, passing through the chanson française to Broadway and Latin America have been greatly applauded. His art surpasses genre definitions; His interpretive ability is linked to a deep musicality.

His pedagogical activity, from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, is equally important. For eighteen years he directed the Singing Department and the Opera Workshop where he established a center of operatic renewal with the premiere of countless works in Puerto Rico. Among her works as a stage director her successes include Hindemith's Hin und zurück, The Turn of the Screw, Britten's Albert Herring, Barber's A Hand of Bridge, Mascagni's L'amico Fritz, Cimarosa's Il marriage segreto, The Three Penny Opera by Weill, The Impresario, Bastien & Bastienne, Così fan tutte by Mozart, La tragédie de Carmen by Bizet/Brook, Doctor Milagro by Bizet, Der Kaiser von Atlantis by Ullmann, L'heure espagnole by Ravel, La voix humaine by Poulenc, Amahl and the Night Visitors, Humperdinck's Hansel and Gretel, among others.

We can also highlight his albums Art Song for Children and Adults with Children's Hearts, Songs by Ernesto Cordero, Requiem by Raymond Torres Santos, Songs by Leonardo Egúrbida and El Paisaje y Su Sombra; the Puerto Rican art song. He has also written Diction for Singers, a textbook for the Diction class offered by our Conservatory.

Ilca López studied at the University of Puerto Rico, the Conservatory of Music and obtained her Master's Degree in Vocal Performance from the New England Conservatory.

In 2013 she was nominated for the Grammy Awards for the recording of Cofresí, the operetta by Rafael Hernández with which the Inter American University celebrated its centenary.

ilopez@cmpr.edu

Dr. Ricardo Sepúlveda Rodríguez
Baritone Dr. Ricardo Sepúlveda has developed a diverse career that integrates lyric theater, concert repertoire, and vocal training, driven by his passion for singing, teaching, and stage direction. Originally from Yabucoa, Puerto Rico, Dr. Sepúlveda has built a career that combines artistic excellence and commitment to vocal education.

Throughout his career, he has worked with such distinguished institutions as the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Casals Festival, Americas Society Music, Quincy Symphony Orchestra, Baroque Artists of Champaign-Urbana, and Muddy River Opera Company, among many others. Among the most notable roles in his repertoire are Zúñiga in Carmen, Papageno in The Magic Flute, Marcello in La Bohème, Bottom in Britten’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Polyphemus in Handel’s Acis and Galatea, and Don Hilarión in La verbena de la Paloma. Another important milestone was his participation in the American premiere of Manita en el suelo, an Afro-Cuban opera by Alejandro García Caturla, presented in its original version with puppets.

Ricardo is a graduate of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where he obtained his Bachelor of Music. He subsequently completed his Master’s and Doctorate in Musical Arts at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, specializing in Vocal Performance with a minor in Vocal Health. His doctoral project, “A Pedagogical Guide to Selected Songs by Charles Ives for Undergraduates,” reflects his interest in bringing complex repertoire to university students and his commitment to vocal education. In addition, he has expanded his training at institutions such as the Summer Vocology Institute at the University of Utah, and has been certified in vocal methodologies such as Somatic Voicework™ The LoVetri Method and Estill Voice Training® Level 1: Figures for Voice Control.

Since 2021, he has been part of the faculty of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico as Assistant Professor of Singing, where he teaches applied singing classes and directs the Opera Workshop. At this institution, he has worked on productions such as Pauline Viardot's Cendrillon, Haydn's La canterina, and Bizet's Le docteur Miracle, collaborating with students and colleagues to create enriching artistic experiences. Prior to this role, he taught at institutions such as the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, Western Illinois University, and Millikin University, contributing to the vocal and stage development of his students.
As a stage and artistic director, he has led productions of operas and stage works ranging from the Baroque to contemporary repertoire. His most notable projects include Blow’s Venus and Adonis, Gluck’s Der bekehrte Trunkenbold, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Mozart’s Der Schauspieldirektor and Bastian und Bastienne, Menotti’s The Old Maid and the Thief, and Le nozze di Figaro. His approach combines creativity and collaboration, integrating music and dramaturgy in innovative ways.

Prior to embarking on his academic career, Dr. Sepúlveda was actively involved in Puerto Rican theater, performing in works by Federico García Lorca and Myrna Casas at the Centro de Bellas Artes Luis A. Ferré. Additionally, he collaborated with the Orfeón San Juan Bautista, contributing to recordings such as Puerto Rico a Capella (2001) and Yale Institute of Sacred Music: Orfeón San Juan Bautista (2002). He also participated in In a Vale of Tears (2012) with Tudor Voices, showcasing his versatility in diverse musical genres.

An active member of organizations such as The Voice Foundation, the National Association of Teachers of Singing, and the Pan-American Vocology Association, Ricardo continues to share his passion for music and education with students and colleagues. His academic and artistic achievements have been recognized with awards such as the Stotler Fellowship Award and the Grace Elizabeth Wilson Award for Excellence in Singing, reaffirming his commitment to excellence in the vocal arts.

For more information, visit www.r-sepulveda.com

rsepulveda@cmpr.edu

Professor José Ramón Torres
Prof. José Ramón Torres-Hernández earned his master's degree in music, concentration in voice from the University of Nevada, Reno. At this institution, he studied under the tutelage of Dr. Katherine DeBoer. Likewise, during his university studies he had the opportunity to work with the Nevada Opera Company in the productions Samson & Delilah, The Magic Flute and II trovature. After graduating from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music where she studied with professors Raquel Gandía and Susan Young, she worked with Professor Rafael Ferrer, then moved to Germany and Italy to continue studies with professors Jeannette Zarou and Doris Andrews, respectively. In New York he received training with Joan Dornemann who after this invited him to participate in IVAI (International Vocal Arts Institute) enjoying a full scholarship.

His virtuosity as a singer has been manifested through his performances as a tenor soloist with entities, such as: Reno Phillarmonic Orchestra, The Sacramento Choral Society, Orquesta Sinfönica de Puerto Rico, Nevada Opera, Opera de Puerto Rico, Teatro de la Opera, Pro -Lyrical Art and Classical Proposal. He has also stood out in the works: The Messiah, The Passion According to Saint Matthew, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony and The Requiems of Mozart and Verdi.

With the University of Nevada Opera Workshop, Reno performed the roles of “Tamino” (The Magic Flute), “Turridu” (Cavalleria rusticana), “Canio” (Pagliacci) and “Rinuccio” (Gianni Schichi). He has starred in zarzuelas and operettas, including: Los gavilanes, The Sevillano's Guest, Luisa Fernanda, La Parranda, El Juramento, La Leyenda del Beso and El Conde de Luxembourg, works for which he has received excellent reviews.

He has served as the protagonist in the premiere of two operas in Puerto Rico by composers from the patio: The flight into Egypt by Roberto Milano and Los jíbaros by Manuel González, as well as in the world launch of the opera Bethlehms Inn, also by Milano . In the latter, he earned critical praise for his quality, precision, diction and excellent vocal range.

Some of the operatic productions he has performed include Amahl and the Night Visitors, Don Pasquale, La Traviata, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Salome, Lucia di Lammermoor, Carmen, The Tales of Hoffman, Le nozze di figaro, Turandot, Norma, II Trovatore, Don Carlo, Andrea Chenier, Manon Lescaut and L'elisir D'amore.

The Lyric Theater Company of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture recruited Torres-Hernández to participate in four successful concert tours throughout Puerto Rico exhibiting the genres of opera, zarzuela and musical comedy. He directed the Opera Workshop at the University of Nevada, Reno for two years.

He was recognized as the winning tenor of The American Landmark Festival Search for Tenors Competition sponsored by the Vienna State Opera. For his extraordinary performance, Torres-Hernández was chosen from a group of seventy-two tenors to participate in the Gala Concert at Carnegie Hall. This event was dedicated to the late Viennese tenor Reichard Tauber. In the summer of 2004, he made his premiere on European stages as “Rodolfo” in La boheme by G. Puccini, this in the city of Rome, Italy, in addition to performing a concert with fragments of La Traviata. In the summer of 2005, he went on a concert tour in northern Spain. Later, in November 2006, he toured Argentina.

He was awarded in two editions of the Metropolitan Opera House Auditions in Puerto Rico, as well as the Palm Beach Opera Competition where he competed with participants from all over America. Among the members of the jury we can mention Enzio Flagelo and Birgit Nilsen. In 1996, he won the Excellence Diversity Fellowship from the University of Nevada. Due to his merits, the Institution agrees to finance his master's studies in “Vocal Performance”. There he also served as director of the Opera Theater directing productions such as Cavalleria Rusticana, Suor Angelica and Amhal and the night visitors.

After working as director of the Lyric Theater Workshop and singing professor at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, for 16 years, he moved since August 2013 to the Puerto Conservatory of Music. At this institution he has offered courses in Vocal Literature, introduction to the operatic repertoire and voice teaching techniques. He is currently a singing teacher.

jose.torres@cmpr.edu

Professor Zulimar López-Hernández
Puerto Rican soprano Prof. Zulimar López-Hernández has performed on the stages of the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Utah Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Minnesota Opera, Nashville, Virginia Opera, and Opera de Puerto Rico, among others. She was a national semifinalist in the Metropolitan Opera Vocal Competition, a third-place winner in the Palm Beach Opera competition, and a radio audience favorite at the Giargiari Bel Canto Competition at the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia.
Since 2014, she has worked as a vocal technique professor in the Music Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and as a vocal coach for Coralia, the UPR Concert Choir.

In the 2024-2025 season, the Puerto Rican soprano sang the role of Amy in the opera The Snowy Day with Minnesota Opera, was the soprano soloist in the Spanish version of Handel's oratorio Messiah with the Reno Chamber Orchestra, and performed in Opera de Puerto Rico's gala performance Puro Puccini. In the 2023-2024 season, she returned to Minnesota Opera for the highly anticipated premiere of the role of Diana in the new orchestration of José "Pepe" Martínez's world-renowned mariachi opera Cruzar la Cara de la Luna, set to a libretto by Leonard Foglia.

She also appeared with the Sacramento Opera in the opera Don Giovanni in the role of Zerlina and at the Princeton Opera Festival in the role of Despina in the opera Cosi fan tutte, culminating the season with the recital Divas and Vargas, presented by the Puerto Rican Opera.

In the 2022-2023 season, she participated in the world premiere of the Puerto Rican opera ¿Y los pasteles? by composer Johanny Navarro, singing the role of Doña Tere, for Teatro de la Ópera and Pro-Arte Musical, followed by the world premiere of Paola Prestini's opera Edward Tulane with the Minnesota Opera, this time singing the roles of Abilene and Betty.
In addition, she returned to the role of Micaëla from Georges Bizet's opera Carmen for the Casals Festival of Puerto Rico and sang the role of Musetta with the Sacramento Opera and the Northern Lights Festival Opera.

In the 2021-2022 season, Ms. López-Hernández made her debut with Arizona Opera in the role of The Woman in the opera The Miracle of Remembrance and with the Orlando Philharmonic as the soprano soloist in Carl Orff's Carmina Burana. Additionally, she returned to Des Moines Metro Opera to participate in a Christmas concert, and recorded the spring recital Morgen for the Teatro de la
University of Puerto Rico, and returned to the role of Musetta in La bohème with the Dayton Opera.

Other recent roles have included Maria in West Side Story with the Newport Music Festival, Evansville Philharmonic, Grand Junction Symphony, and Dayton Opera, and the role of Pamina in Die Zauberflöte and Susanna in Le nozze di Figaro with the Utah Opera. She has also excelled in leading lyric soprano roles in the traditional repertoire, including titles by Verdi, Mozart, Puccini, Donizetti, Bizet, and Gounod: La traviata, La Bohème, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Pasquale, Carmen, Cosí fan tutte, Don Giovanni, Roméo et Juliette, and Falstaff. She has also excelled in contemporary music, such as operas by Mexican composer Daniel Catán (Florence in the Amazon and Rappaccini's Daughter).

At the local level, she has appeared with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra as the soprano soloist in Handel's Messiah, the Requiems of Fauré and Mozart, respectively, and the traditional Christmas Concert. She has also collaborated with the San Juan Philharmonic Choir, the Zarzuela and Operetta Foundation, the Ibero-American Arts Festival, and Opera al Fresco.

She is frequently chosen by Puerto Rican composers to premiere their pieces such as the Sinfonietta: Trópico Soñado by Professor Carlos Vazquez, the Symphony of the New Millennium by Raymond Torres-Santos and the Love Songs by our Roberto Sierra (premiere pending).

Zulimar López-Hernández holds a Bachelor's degree in Vocal Music Education from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. She holds an Artist Diploma from the Academy of Vocal Arts in Philadelphia and a Professional Studies Diploma from the Mannes School of Music in New York. She earned a Master's degree in Vocal Pedagogy with distinction from the Voice Study Center at the University of Puerto Rico.
University of Wales, Trinity Saint David (United Kingdom), with a research focus on reflective vocal practice, autonomous learning of singing students, and the development of supervised practice strategies.

Professor Alfonso Fuentes
Puerto Rican composer, pianist and improviser. He studied at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music (CMPR) and at the New England Conservatory where he was accepted in five departments. Performers of his work include members of the symphony orchestras of Los Angeles, Chicago, Winston-Salem, Cuba; the Warsaw Symphony and Puerto Rico Symphony orchestras; Warsaw Wind Quintet; transit; Chameleon Arts Ensemble; Aulos, Camerata Caribe, San Juan Ballet; members of Dark Song and Silk Road Ensemble; professors from the universities of Michigan, Michigan State, North Carolina, Colorado in Boulder, California in Sacramento, Austin-Texas, Houston-Tilltson, Internacional de Andalucía, conservatories of Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Manhattan School of Music, and by important local soloists and international: in places in Poland, Denmark, Norway, England, China, Japan, Israel, Spain, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, Costa Rica, Cuba, the United States and Puerto Rico (PR).

It has been commissioned by Treetops Chamber Music Society; The American String Quartet, PR Community Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts, CMPR, Institute of Puerto Rican Culture (ICP), Colegio San Ignacio, APAOSS, Kathleen Jones, Oskar Espina-Ruiz, Saxton Rose. As a commercial pianist and improvisational soloist he has made nearly 4,000 performances and 300 tours across three continents, including Carnegie Hall and the Jerusalem Hass Promenade. And he has worked with hundreds of figures, including Placido Domingo, Gina María Hidalgo, Sandro, Andy Montañés, Quique Talavera, Puerto Rico All Star Jazz Band. He has also been a director, arranger and producer. Artistic residencies include: Claribongo at Sichuan Conservatory, China; Contempo 2012, Costa Rica; Boricua Rhythms Conference, SUNY at Albany; Bongo Passion Tour (through New York and Connecticut, including Symphony Space); XV Latin American Music Festival and II Congress of Musical Composition, Caracas; X and XI Forum of Composers of Central America and the Caribbean in Guatemala City and Veracruz respectively; XVII Havana Music Festival; First Meeting of Ibero-American Composers, Buenos Aires.

Author of seven unpublished books of poetry, short stories, aesthetics; From several articles on music and society published in local newspapers, he has designed several educational methods-concepts. It is mentioned or discussed in books written by Díaz Ayala; JA López; A. Quintero; Thompson and Schwartz; C. Tirado, and in two doctoral theses written by Stuppard and Alonso for North American universities. Nominated for the 10th Latin Grammy for Best Classical Composition, in 1995 his artistic career was recognized by the ICP. In 2008 he defended before the Legislative Assembly two bills in favor of musical creation and employment for musicians living in Puerto Rico, of whose proposals he is the author and co-author. He is founder and artistic director of the Puerto Rican Congress of Musical Creation of the CMPR, an institution where he has also served as Interim Dean of Academic Affairs. Currently (2013) he offers classes in composition and orchestration.

afuentes@cmpr.edu

Prof. Manuel J. Ceide
Composer, bassist, educator and director specialized in contemporary chamber music. He is an Assistant Professor of the Composition Department at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, within which he has carried out management tasks, having been in charge of the creation and development of the Experimental Music Laboratory programs. Founder and director of the contemporary chamber group Álea 21.

He completed musical studies at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, Berklee College of Music in Boston, Rotterdam Conservatory and the Hogeschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht (HKU) in Holland, where he studied composition with Henk Alkema and Peter -Jan Wagemans.

He has been a teacher at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico, also appearing as a visiting professor at the Butarque Institute in Madrid and the University of La Rioja in Spain, Berklee College of Music in Boston, the University of Havana in Cuba and the Río Piedras campuses. and Bayamón from the University of Puerto Rico. Frequent collaborator with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in writing programs and as a lecturer.
In the field of research, he has collaborated with articles for the Boletín Música of the Casa de las Américas in Havana, as well as in publications for IASPM Latin America and the MUSAM at the Complutense University of Madrid, in collaboration with the Spanish Society of Musicology .

His artistic career has been characterized by intense activity in the field of contemporary music. His work as a member or in charge of the projects stands out: El Aeroplano in Galicia, Spain, The Composers of New England Collective in Boston, the Nieuw Muziek Group in Utrecht, Holland and Álea 21, a contemporary music group in residence at the Conservatory of Music from Puerto Rico.

Álea 21, which he founded and directs since 2005, is a key player in the development of contemporary music in the country, with a pedagogical dimension that has an impact on broad academic circles. The group has performed more than 70 concerts, currently counting on a high number of premieres in Puerto Rico, as well as more than 40 world premieres.

President and director of the Álea 21 Cabinet, a cultural management project created from the group's artistic production.
He is the founder and director of the Flores y Balas Caribbean avant-garde chamber music festival, whose objective, since its first edition in 2013, is to create communication channels between Cuban and Puerto Rican composers and researchers within thematic projects created from aesthetics. of Vanguard.

Within the framework of these meetings, he has established close professional ties with Cuba. He is presented as a guest composer at the Latin American Workshop on Composition and Interpretation, in its III, IV and V editions, convened by the Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba (UNEAC) and the Casa de las Américas in Havana. He is invited to the Casa de las Américas Composition Prize in its 2015 edition, where, in addition to his presentations as a speaker, he directs concerts and open workshops in front of his group Álea 21. In that same year he served as a guest speaker at the Festival of Chamber Music Leo Brouwer.

Since 2015 he has been a lecturer and member of the academic committee of the theoretical colloquium Nostalgia for the Future, as well as co-founder, director and composer of the eponymous performance project of experimental chamber music, integrated within the structure of the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music. and with which he has carried out an intense presence on stage.
He is part of the faculty of the Diploma and current Master's Degree in Management of the Historical Documentary Heritage of Music, organized by the Esteban Salas Musical Heritage Office, of the San Gerónimo University College of Havana, where he teaches classes on Contemporary Musical Heritage of Latin America and the Caribbean: poetics and avant-garde and its practical workshop, Musical Notation and Music of the 20th Century, also being in charge of directing master's thesis.

He has been a member of the jury for the composition prize of the Ateneo Puertorriqueño in San Juan and president of the jury of the Asociación Hermanos Saíz prize in Havana. In 2017 he was invited to participate as a jury in the prestigious Casa de las Américas Composition Award.

He is presented as a keynote speaker at the 2015 edition of the Havana International Jazz Festival with the conference The Gray Melancholy of Ulrike Meinhof, poetics and imaginaries between Jazz and experimental chamber music.

Member of the organizing committee and speaker at the XIII congress of the Latin American branch of IASPM, held in San Juan. Speaker at the II international conference MUSAM, of the Spanish Society of Musicology at the Complutense University of Madrid.

As a director he carries out intense work aimed at making visible the Latin American and Caribbean experimental repertoire. Special mention should be made of the absolute premiere of the work Episodes from the Book of Manuel by the Cuban composer Wilma Alba Cal and the premiere in Puerto Rico (absolute premiere in its Spanish version) of the chamber opera El Cimarrón by the German composer Hans Werner Henze. In 2019, he directed in Havana the revival of the work Impronta, by Cuban composer Carlos Fariñas, leading the Percuba ensemble group and with pianist Mayté Aboy as soloist.

As a composer, his music has been frequently programmed in Spain, the United States, Brazil, Holland, Belgium, Puerto Rico and Cuba. Several of his works have been programmed in different editions of the Inter-American Festival and the Ibero-American Arts Festival in Puerto Rico.

The aesthetic dimension of his creation, characterized by a collective concept of interaction with the performers, as well as by frequent theatrical and literary references as a structural starting point, can be seen in his works such as Radicalia, The Gray Melancholy of Ulrike Meinhoff, So that the dream alive, Milton does not exist, Amores Sector-IV or Fiero y Tender.

mceide@cmpr.edu

Professor Armando Ramírez
Puerto Rican composer Armando Luis Ramírez began to take a serious interest in music in his early adolescence. He was fourteen years old when he began organ studies with Maestro Samuel Navarro at the old musical academy of Casa Margarida, in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Shortly after, while he was attending high school at the Colegio Bautista de Carolina, he began playing piano, drums and arranging under the tutelage of Maestro Luis Juarbe. It is in this context that his interest in music became a vocation and, as a consequence, once graduated, he enrolled in the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music in 1988. In said university institution, and in pursuit of his vocation, he will complete two consecutive bachelor's degrees with high honors, one in Musical Education (1994) and the next in Theory and Composition (1996).

His creativity and talent were unequivocally evident in the premiere of his work Fanfare for brass and percussion ensemble (1993), directed by Maestro Rafael E. Irizarry. This work was composed while he was still a composition student in 1993, outlining his talent and work ethic. Two of the decisive influences in his initial training as a composer would be the Maestros Amaury Veray and Ignacio Morales Nieva, excellent figures in composition and musical teaching at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. In addition, he had among his teachers artists and educators of the stature of Luz N. Hutchinson, Leonardo Egúrbida, Kathleeen Jones, Gloria Navarro, and Víctor Meléndez, among others.

Already heading towards composition, Maestro Ramírez undertook graduate studies at Temple University, in Philadelphia, United States. He obtained his Master of Music with a specialty in composition in 1998, having been mentored by, among others, the distinguished professors Maurice Wright and Richard Brodhead. Upon his return to the country, Maestro Ramírez begins his pedagogical phase teaching, among others, the core courses of theory, harmony and composition at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, work that he has been doing for more than two decades for the benefit of the country and the new generations of Puerto Rican musicians. During this time he has prepared important thematic courses such as "The Ballets of Igor Stravinsky", "The Nine Symphonies of Beethoven", and the emblematic course on "The Music of the Beatles".

His compositional catalog includes a range of works in different instrumentations and stylistic stages, among others: Adagio for string ensemble, Concertino for tuba and piano, and Triptych for tenor and chamber ensemble, all premiered in 1994. Later, and Before completing his graduate studies, some of his most important early works were premiered, such as his symphonic poem Hermit's Enigma, performed by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Maestro Roselín Pabón, and the Divertimento for String Orchestra, performed by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. Temple University Symphony, conducted by the eminent violinist, pedagogue and conductor, now deceased, Maestro Luis Biava. The orchestral work Portrait of Chess Players was also conducted by Maestro Biava as part of his duties as composer-in-residence and coordinator of FOSJA (Festival of Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Americas) in 2002 and later by Maestro Pabón in Puerto Rico . His work Three Short Pieces for Woodwind Quartet and the soundtrack of the film Lover's Grave, produced in Philadelphia, are also from this period.

Without attempting to establish an exclusive hierarchy, we can mention the following mature works as an example of his prolific compositional production: Seven paintings by Dalí, for euphonium and tuba; Black Cat, for solo tuba; Four Folkloric Etudes, for solo piccolo; and, Four rustic essays, for piano, a work premiered by pianist Kimberly Davis in Havana, Cuba, in 2015. Likewise, he has composed Six miniatures for viola and piano; Caribbean Impressions, for brass sextet; and the Harlequin Sonata, for trumpet and piano. Among his most recent compositions we find the Sonata for viola and piano (included in the production Encantos de Mi Tierra) commissioned in 2019 and performed on various artistic platforms in Brazil, Cuba, the United States and Puerto Rico by Joel Pagán, El matador de sharks , for symphony orchestra, commissioned to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and Transformations, for harp and cello (dedicated to cancer victims)

In the field of popular music, Ramírez has participated in various groups as an arranger and performing musician. For example, he served as keyboardist in the group Así Somos, and as bassist, composer and director of the group Proyecto Raíces. Likewise, he has been musical director of the Beatles Sinfónico concert series, together with the group The Jukebox and the Royal Symphony Orchestra, in the Festival Hall of the Fine Arts Center in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

At present, Maestro Ramírez continues his creative and pedagogical work without giving up one bit in his artistic efforts and commitment. His music is published by Cayambis Music Press, a publisher specializing in Latin American music, and by BrassWorks4.

aramirez@cmpr.edu

Dr. Francisco Cabán, director; fiddle

Dr. Francisco Cabán is a violinist, professor, chamber and orchestral musician. As a soloist and chamber musician, he has performed at the Casals Festival, the Inter-American Festival of the Arts, the Havana Chamber Music Festival, the Clazz Music Festival (Italy), and FOOSA (California). For more than two decades, he has been Professor of Violin and Chamber Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. His intense teaching work includes the creation and artistic direction of the Violin and String Festivals. These activities have featured distinguished professors and artists, including Guillermo Figueroa, Federico Agostini, José Francisco del Castillo, Sergiu Schwartz, Nancy Zhou, Miroslav Hristov, the Harlem String Quartet, and members of the Catalyst Quartet, among others. His students have won regional competitions and received scholarships from institutions such as the Cleveland Institute of Music, Indiana University, Bard College, the University of Michigan, and Lynn University, among others. Many of them have gone on to join the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and have performed as soloists with that orchestra and with the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. In 2015, he founded the Sanromá Trio, the ensemble in residence at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, with his colleagues Diana Figueroa and Luis Miguel Rojas.

His concert seasons include complete cycles of the Beethoven and Brahms trios, as well as works by Arensky, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Turina, Piazzolla, and the work of contemporary composers. In the 2023-24 season, they premiered the Triple Concerto by maestro Raymond Torres-Santos, a work dedicated to them and which was commissioned by the OSPR. As a soloist, he has performed concertos ranging from Bach to Shostakovich, alongside orchestras from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, and the United States. In these, he has collaborated with maestro Maximiano Valdés, Roselín Pabón, and Guido López Gavilán, among others. Currently, he occupies the third chair of the first violin section of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, an ensemble of which he served as Assistant Concertmaster in the 1997-98 and 2015-2016 seasons. In addition to his concerts and teaching work in Puerto Rico, Cabán has conducted workshops, master classes and recitals at various universities in the United States, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba and Peru. He is also a faculty member at the FOOSA summer festival in Fresno, California.

In the past, he has been a faculty member at the Clazz Music Festival in Arcidosso, Italy and the Killington Music Festival in Vermont. In his award-winning recordings, consisting of the productions “Ola nocturna” and “Ola diurna,” Cabán has captured important works from the Latin American repertoire for violin and piano. In these works, he collaborated with distinguished musicians such as the renowned Puerto Rican pianist Ivonne Figueroa, the Brazilian violinist Cármelo de los Santos, and the American pianist Kevin Class. In addition, he recorded the Concertino Juvenil by maestro Roberto Milano with the String Orchestra of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, conducted by maestro Emanuel Olivieri. Dr. Francisco Cabán studied violin and chamber music at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico with professors José Figueroa and Joaquín Vidaechea. She then moved to the United States to pursue graduate studies, earning a master's degree from Temple University in Philadelphia and a doctorate in violin performance from the University of Texas at Austin under the tutelage of teachers Helen Kwalwasser and Eugene Gratovich. She also completed further studies in Europe with teachers Gerárd Poulet, Valery Klimov, Midori and José Luis García Asencio.

www.franciscocaban.com

fcaban@cmpr.edu

Professor Fernando Vela

Professor Fernando Vela, viola professor. Principal of the viola section of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

nandomv08@gmail.com

Professor Iván Rijos Guzmán
A native of Río Grande, Puerto Rico, Professor Iván Rijos began his guitar studies with Rubén Guzmán, Gamaliel Román, Félix Parrilla, and Ángel Quiñones. He entered the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music at the age of 15, where he studied guitar with Maestro Leonardo Egúrbida. He also participated in chamber music classes with Joaquín Vidaechea. Around that time, he was awarded the Josefino Parés First Prize at the José Ignacio Quintón National Competition in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1981). He received the Special Prize for Best Performance of Latin American Music at the International Guitar Competition in Havana, Cuba (1982), and twice won First Prize at the Casa España International Guitar Competition in San Juan, Puerto Rico (1984 and 1986).

In 1987, he was selected to participate in what was the last Master Class offered by Maestro Andrés Segovia at the “Manhattan School of Music” in New York City. After listening to him, Maestro Segovia extended an invitation to him to play for him at the recital that would be held in his honor. This distinction marks a new stage in Rijos' professional career.

Rijos entered the Professional Studies Program at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore and studied there with maestro Manuel Barrueco. Then, he moved to the city of Tucson where he completed graduate studies at the University of Arizona. There he studies with Master Thomas Patterson.

Iván has received master classes with prominent guitarists: Ángel Romero, David Russell, Juan Sorroche, José Tomás, Ernesto Biteti, Sharon Isbin, Alice Artz and Roberto Ausel.

Among other achievements obtained by Rijos are the following: his performance as a Finalist in the Francisco Tárrega International Competition in Benicasim, Spain (1990); winner of the “President's Concerto Competition” at the University of Arizona (1993); winner of the “Promusicis International Award” in New York (1994). Wins First Prize in the “Gold Competition of the Great Lakes”, Ohio, (1994); First Prize in the Alhambra International Competition in Alcoy, Spain (1994); First Prize in the “Norman Sholin Memorial Guitar Competition” at the University of Arizona (1994). In 1995, Iván Rijos received the “Fullbright Grant” to study Spanish music.

Iván Rijos made his debut at Carnegie Hall in New York City in 1996. This event was repeated in 2000. He has performed as a soloist in important Festivals around the world. Among the orchestras with whom he has performed as a soloist are the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Guildhall Symphony Orchestra of London, the Boston Pro Arte Chamber Orchestra, the Valencia Symphony Orchestra and the Corfu Chamber Orchestra in Greece. Rijos has played recitals in Europe, North Central and South America.

In 1997, Rijos recorded with the San Juan Pops Orchestra the “Bayoán Concerto” for guitar and orchestra by the Puerto Rican composer Ernesto Cordero. In 1998, he released his album “Dedicación”, where he stands out as a soloist and presents his role as an arranger and composer.

Iván Rijos has been a professor at the University of Puerto Rico, at the Boston Conservatory of Music and at the University of Arizona. He has been a guest teacher in guitar courses and master classes in Puerto Rico, the United States and Europe, in addition to participating as a jury in international competitions and contests. Currently, he is a guitar teacher at the Escuela Libre de Música de San Juan and at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, a task he combines with a career as a soloist.

ivan.rijos@cmpr.edu

Prof. Maricarmen Rivera Rivera
In 1989, Professor Maricarmen Rivera earned her Bachelor of Music degree with a specialty in Double Bass (Magna Cum Laude) from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of Professor Manuel Verdeguer.

During his years of studies, he participated in various music festivals in the United States such as the Eastern Music Festival in North Carolina, the String Congress in Dallas, Texas, and the Johannesen International School of the Arts in British Columbia, Canada. where he studies with Professor Gary Karr. He has played in master classes by renowned double bass educators such as: David Walters (The Juilliard School), John Deak (New York Philharmonic Orchestra) and Eugene Levinson (Principal, New York Philharmonic Orchestra).

During the summers of 1988, 1989 and 1991 she received scholarships from the Asociación Pro-Symphony Orchestra (APOS) and the Aspen Music Festival where she studied with Professor Stuart Sankey. From 1990 to 1992 she received a scholarship from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where she obtained a Master of Music degree with a specialty in Double Bass, under the tutelage of Prof. Stuart Sankey. During this period, he represented the University of Michigan at the Annual Midwestern Conference of Double Bassists of the United States Recital, in addition to belonging to the Ann Arbor and Greater Lansing Symphony Orchestras. In the summer of 1992, she was selected as a double bassist in the Spoletto Festival Orchestra.

After completing his master's studies in 1992, he returned to his position as double bassist in the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (a position he has held since 1985) and participates extensively with various chamber orchestras such as: the Venusz Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra Heliconias and the Concerto Chamber Orchestra. With the latter among her multiple collaborations, Professor Rivera performed at the Casals Festival, under the direction of Maestro Henry Hutchinson Negrón. Additionally, she has been a double bass teacher at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music since 2010.

In addition to her role as a double bassist, Maricarmen studied singing at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music with teacher Ilca López. As a result of this, he has participated on various occasions as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra (under the tutelage of teachers Roselín Pabón, Eugene Kohn and Guillermo Figueroa) and again as a soloist at the Casals Festival, in the role of La grandmother in the opera La Vida Breve under the direction of Maestro Maximiano Valdés. Likewise, he had the honor of performing with the soprano Margarita Castro and the Choir of the University of Puerto Rico (on the occasion of the celebration of the centennial of said institution) in various venues of the University of Puerto Rico and at the National Theater of the Dominican Republic together with the symphony orchestra of said country.

Currently, Maricarmen Rivera continues as a double bass teacher at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and as a double bassist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

maricarmen.rivera@cmpr.edu

Professor Luis Enrique Juliá
Professor Luis Enrique Juliá was born in 1953 in Puerto Rico, where he received his primary, secondary, and university education. He returned to live and work on the island in 1988. He was nominated for a 2009 Latin Grammy for his live double CD, "Concierto de aniversario," featuring works by Mendelssohn and Brahms, and his composition "Quintet for Clarinet and Strings" (2008), commissioned for the 75th anniversary of Pro Arte Musical.

Juliá has performed in recitals, conferences, master classes, and radio and television programs in the United States, Spain, Italy, France, Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Martinique, Aruba, Virgin Islands, Cuba, Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico.
He has collaborated on creative projects with the painter Rafael Trelles; the literary critic Mercedes López-Baralt; the Cuban filmmaker Enrique Pineda Barnet; clarinetists Ricardo Morales (principal of the Philadelphia Orchestra) and Kathleen Jones (of the Puerto Rico Symphony); with the string quartets Pacifica Quartet, Dalí and Formalist; bass-baritone Justino Díaz; soprano Susan Young; the tenor Alejandro Vázquez; the poet and declaimer David Ortiz; the Cuban-Puerto Rican actress and producer Marilyn Pupo; violinist Henry Hutchinson Negrón; the virtuoso viola da gamba and recorder player David Dyer and his early music group San Juan Consort; the composer and guitarist Ernesto Cordero; singer-songwriters Danny Rivera, Roy Brown and Andrés Jiménez (El Jíbaro); electric bassist, jazz arranger and composer, Sammy Morales; sound engineers, composers and music producers Carlos Lazarte, Egui Sierra and Néstor Salomón; and the Puerto Rican Cuatrista Edwin Colón Zayas.

Currently, as part of the Trío Lorenzo, he continues his exploration of a Puerto Rican musical language alongside the young piano virtuoso Julio Boria and the legendary jazz double bassist, Eddie Gómez.

Luis Enrique Juliá's first compositions were for theatrical productions by the actresses and directors Provi Seín, Idalia Pérez Garay and the Argentine Norma Aleandro; the actors and theater directors Carmelo Santana Mojica, Oscar Giner, Dean Zayas and the playwright Myrna Casas; the choreographers Ramón (Tato) Molina, Ana García and Jesús Miranda; and the architect, set designer and ceramist Jaime Suárez.

He has also been the arranger, producer and musical director of the recordings for children's choir that accompany the editions of Villancico Yaucano (2008) by Amaury Veray and Los Reyes Magos arrive at night (2009) by Braulio Dueño Colón and Manuel Fernández Juncos . He produced a new recording of the 27 songs from the book Canciones de la aurora (2010) by Diego Duey, also to be sung by children in schools. These three productions were commissioned and published by the University of Puerto Rico Publishing House.

Luis Enrique Juliá composed and recorded his original scores for the Altarpiece of the Nativity and Venus over the Caribbean Sky (Homenaje a Rafael Hernández) for Ballets de San Juan, as well as Son de Andanza, for the premiere of the Andanza modern dance company. He also contributed songs, dances and incidental music to the experimental theater of Aleph Productions: Games of Obsession (in collaboration with Nicky Aponte), Tartufo, Beauty and the Beast, Mirrors, Don Juan Tenorio, Life is a Dream and the poetic recital Julia from Burgos in two voices.

In 2002, Juliá produced the Guitarra Caribeña concert for public television accompanied by his quintet, with whom he also recorded a program for Noches de café Teatro by producer and entertainer Edgardo Huertas, which is still part of WIPR-TV's programming.

In 1993, the compact disc Luis Enrique Juliá / Caribe was well received: a mix of European melodies with popular themes and rhythms using jazz procedures, for amplified classical guitar, Cuban tres, string quartet, electric bass, drums, percussion, synthesizers and piano .

Juliá studied jazz history and harmony with Fritz Kersting and Andrew Lázaro, and maintains a close creative relationship with his colleagues in the discipline of composition, Manuel Ceide, Alfonso Fuentes, Armando Ramírez and Alberto Rodríguez Ortiz. In his youth and first professional stage he had been a disciple and collaborator of Amaury Veray and Héctor Campos Parsi, both from the first generation of Puerto Rican composers of the 20th century.

He studied classical guitar under the tutelage of José Tomás, Rey de la Torre and Leonardo Egúrbida and participated in master classes with Andrés Segovia, Alirio Díaz, Oscar Ghiglia and Leo Brouwer. He obtained the Title of Senior Guitar Professor in 1979 from the Oscar Esplá Institute in Alicante, Spain. In 1975 he had graduated from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Puerto Rico.
Since 1988, Luis Enrique Juliá became part of the faculty of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he is a Professor. Among his disciples, the guitarist, researcher and composer Hermelindo Ruiz Mestre stands out internationally, who after obtaining his Bachelor's degree in Classical Guitar, completed Master's studies and an Artist Diploma at Yale University and a Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Kentucky; Dr. Isaac Lausell, professor of classical and jazz guitar at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, has published 3 DCs and four books on the art of playing this unique instrument. Lausell had earned a master's degree from North Texas University and the DMA from SUNY Stonybrook; At that same university, the early music specialist and professor at Bloomingdale School of Music and John Jay College in New York City, José Gabriel Maldonado Suárez, completed his doctoral studies.

His students have also stood out Kristian Pérez McDougall, composer-guitarist, professor and coordinator of the Music Department of the Catholic University in Ponce; the contemporary music specialist and composer John Rivera Pico, who is pursuing his doctorate in England; Ángel Candelaria with his project Angel's Guitar https://angelsguitar.com/ ; the teacher of the Free School of Arecibo, Rey Nieves, pedagogue and performer of classical, electric, flamenco guitar and the Puerto Rican cuatro in concerts and in popular music as accompanist of the singer Luis Fonsi; Josiane Feliciano, teacher at the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free School, producer and sound engineer, composer and arranger of rock, pop and concert music; Steven Franco, who earned a Master's in Music Therapy from the University of Missouri-Kansas City and excels in that field in California and as a duet guitarist with his wife, corollary soprano Alba Franco-Cancel; and the certified educators of the Suzuki Method: Ian Roa, José Ramos Santiago, Adamarys Quiles (also a member of the contemporary music group Alea 21), Esteban Pérez Pierantoni and Danny Ruiz Torres, who died untimely, who had obtained the First Prize in the 3rd Young Caribbean Guitarists Competition in 1998 on the French island of Martinique.

Agustín Rosado Márquez, while he was in his first semester of his 2nd year at the Conservatory, won the First Prize in the 5th edition of the National Guitar Competition in Mayagüez and the Special Audience Award for his interpretation of a Puerto Rican dance. Two years later he was the first guitarist to win the Soloist Concerto Competition Prize with the Conservatory Orchestra for his interpretation of Ernesto Cordero's “Antillean Concerto for Guitar and Orchestra,” which was later replicated twice for the public in Miramar and in Ponce, under the baton of teachers Guillermo Figueroa, Jr. and Roselín Pabón.

ljulia@cmpr.edu

Prof. Alberto J. Rodríguez Ortiz
Guitarist and composer Professor Alberto Rodríguez Ortiz is known for successfully bringing new aesthetic trends to the most demanding audiences, demonstrating that music continues to be an art form in constant transformation and development.

It is this combination of technique, musicality and stage presence that has led him to participate in important international series and festivals, such as: Fundación Cortés (San Juan 2021), CulturArte (San Juan 2020), Centro Cultural de San Sebastián Luis Rodríguez Cabrero ( San Sebastián 2015), Pro Arte Musical (San Juan, 2014), Aperio Américas, (Texas, 2013 and 2012), Sam Houston University Festival of Strings (Texas, 2012), Fundación Musical de Ponce (Ponce, PR 2010), Second Sundays Guitar Series (New York, NY 2009), Festival Pa´Lo Escrito (DF, Mexico 2009 and 2008), Festival Casals (San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2008), Música de Cámara, Inc (New York, NY 2006, 2002 and 1997), Ibero-American Arts Festival (San Juan, Puerto Rico 2012, 2009 and 2007), XXI Contemporary Music Festival and XIV Caribbean Composers Forum (Havana, 2006 and 2004), Puerto Rico International Guitar Festival (2000), María Escalón Núñez International Guitar Festival (El Salvador 2000) and the Second Twentieth Century Music Festival (Puerto Rico, 1999).

He has been a soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra of El Salvador, with the Bayamón Symphony Orchestra and with the Chamber Orchestra of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. In 1997, he was composer-in-residence at the Rome Festival (Rome, Italy). Rodríguez Ortiz has also performed in cities such as London, Porto, Paris, Vienna, Barcelona, Morelia, Orlando and Miami.

He recently played a 10-concert tour of different towns on his native island titled Puerto Rico in the World of Classical Guitar, where the work of four masters of classical guitar and mandolin in Puerto Rico was celebrated: Leonardo Egúrbida, Juan Sorroche , Ernesto Cordero and Gustavo Batista.

He was Artist in Residence at the Ana G. Méndez University during the 2019-2020 academic year. He has three recordings as a soloist under the Nueva Venecia, Inc. label. His works are regularly performed by the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and are published by Star Music Publishing. He has recently ventured into rock music with his group APE (Alberto and his electric project), of which he is the director and guitarist.

arodriguez@cmpr.edu

Dr. Luis Miguel Rojas
Rojas is a product of the “System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela” (El Sistema). He began his musical career as a trumpet player, a member of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra of Venezuela. At nineteen (19) years old, due to lung disease, he had to give up the trumpet and began studying the cello. Later, and with only three years of studies, he made the Latin American premiere of the “Cello Concerto by Aram Khachaturian,” accompanied by the “Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.” Since then, he has performed as a soloist in Venezuela, the United States, Holland, Germany, France, Cuba, Mexico and Puerto Rico. Rojas received his Bachelor's degree from the “Simón Bolívar Conservatory of Music”, where he studied with professors Carlos Méndez, William Molina, and Paul Dessene. He holds a Master's degree in cello performance from Duquesne University of Pittsburgh, where he studied with Misha Quint and Anne Martindale-Williams. And, a Doctorate from Michigan State University, focused on the study of the works of Latin American composers.

He has held positions with several orchestras, including: Altoona Symphony (Principal Cello), Wheeling Symphony (Associate Principal Cello), and the Pittsburg New Music Ensemble; For two seasons he was a substitute cellist with the “Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra” and the “Pittsburgh Opera.” As well as substitute in the “Grand Rapids Symphony”, Michigan. Later, during his stay in Philadelphia, he was Teaching Artist of the “Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra” and a member of the “Dali Quartet.” He has remained active as a soloist, chamber musician, and collaborates with contemporary composers in the creation of new works for the cello. He has been noted for promoting Latin American music and its inclusion in the standard cello repertoire. He has been invited to offer conferences and recitals on Latin American music by contemporary composers in California, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, and in countries such as Venezuela, France, Argentina, Cuba and Mexico. Currently, Rojas serves as Principal Cellist of the “Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.” He is a professor at the “Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.” And, he plays with a cello; “Matías Herrera Marrosu,” Della Scuola Cremonesse, 1995.

lrojas@cmpr.edu

Professor Elisa Torres Pérez
Professor Elisa Torres Pérez is the first Puerto Rican to hold the position of principal harpist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. A native of Old San Juan, she began her harp studies at age seven with Marcelino Canino in the String Program of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. She continued her studies with Irma Ramos and Maria Rosa Vidal, Puerto Rico's first female harpist. At the same time, she studied at the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free Music School, where she specialized in classical guitar, studying with Carlos O. Morales.

At the age of sixteen she participated in master classes at Indiana University, where a year later she began her university studies under the tutelage of Susann McDonald, obtaining her bachelor's and master's degrees in harp. In 2003 he won the Buehler White Prize in the National Society of Arts and Letters competition.

Since his return to Puerto Rico in 2005, he has actively participated in chamber music recitals in different towns on the Island. It should be noted that he has also performed as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra on several occasions performing the Danzas: Sacra and Profana by Claude Debussy, the Flute and Harp Concerto by WA Mozart and the Harp Concerto by Alberto Ginastera.

Elisa has presented recitals on international stages in Brazil and Mexico.

Elisa has also stood out in popular music, collaborating with musicians such as Danny Rivera, Nelson González, Mima and Cultura Profética. He participated in the recording of music for the films Mal de Amores, Por amor en el Caserío and Under My Nails, the short film El Cielo de los Ratones, performing music by Omar Silva and as well as for the documentary Landfall with music by Angélica Negrón. During the month of November 2010 he released his first album titled Natural, sponsored by Humberto Ramírez.

He worked on a project sponsored by the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, for the publication of harp arrangements with a didactic approach. The collections of her arrangements, My Little Arpa and My Christmas Arpa, include children's songs from the Latin American repertoire.

His latest production, Images, presents a collection of works in classical style. It was released independently in October 2018 and was selected by the National Foundation for Popular Culture as one of the best 20 local record productions.

In addition to her work as a harpist and arranger, Elisa also works as a Harp Professor in the Baccalaureate program of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, president of the Puerto Rico Chapter of the American Harp Society and in her independent work as founder and director from the Glissando program for harp ensembles.

etorres@cmpr.edu

Professor Omar Velázquez Frías
He was born in 1969 in San Juan Puerto Rico. At the age of 10 he began his violin studies with Prof. Mario Rosa at the Julio Selles Solá School in Villa Nevarez. Professor Rosa takes him to the door of the renowned Maestro Jaime Medina, who welcomed him as a student in the Strings Program for children of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, with the endorsement of its director Obed Tirado. Almost simultaneously he was admitted to the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan, obtaining the violin medal upon graduating in 1987.

At the age of 16 he made his debut with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra with Mendelssohn's Concerto in E minor under the baton of Maestro Roselín Pabón. The following year he entered the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where he studied his bachelor's degree with the
legendary Puerto Rican virtuoso José “Pepito” Figueroa. Velázquez graduated with honors and received the Medal of the String Department in recognition of the most outstanding student. Thanks to the support of his parents and scholarships awarded by: the Clara Luz Vizcarrondo Foundation, the Corporation of Musical Arts, Pueblo Supermarkets, the Richard Starling Foundation and the Association Pro Symphony Orchestra of Puerto Rico, Velázquez was able to participate in renowned Festivals and Summer Courses such as Interlochen, Aspen, Nice, Switzerland and the Mozarteum, where he took classes with violinists such as Alberto Lizy, Dorothy Delay, Aaron Rosand, Gerard Poulette and Nathan Milstein. He also studied with the famous soloist and pedagogue Miriam Fried at the University of Bloomington, Indiana.

In 1990 he won by audition the position of assistant concertmaster of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and in 2016 he won the position of concertmaster in which he serves to the present. As part of his career, Velázquez has been a member of several chamber groups such as the Padre Antonio Soler Orchestra, Concerto Chamber Orchestra, Cuarteto Velázquez, Cuarteto Campos and the Puerto Rico Chamber Ensemble.

Among his many solo performances, his debut in September 2018 with the National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic stands out, where he performed Beethoven's Concerto in D Major. In addition to his career as a performer, Velázquez has dedicated much of his time to teaching the violin. He has been a professor at the Carolina School of Fine Arts, the String Program for children, the Preparatory School, and from 2005 to the present as a Professor at the Baccalaureate level of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. Some of his students are already members of the Symphony Orchestra and many others pursue successful careers in Puerto Rico and abroad.

ovelazquez@cmpr.edu

Professor Fernando Mattina
Prof. Fernando Mattina-Canales is a professional guitarist and educator with over 40 years of musical experience. Fernando holds a Bachelor of Music in Jazz Performance from Berklee College of Music in Boston, and advanced jazz and improvisation studies. He has also completed several other courses such as Big Band Performance from Los Angeles City College and private studies in classical guitar, jazz guitar, and improvisation with renowned local and US educators such as Juan Sorroche, Manuel Gayol, and Leonardo Egurbida from San Juan, PR; renowned jazz guitarist and author Ted Green; Bruce Arnold from the faculties of New York University; Berklee College of Music faculty members John Damian, Bruce Bartlett, and Dave Santoro; Charlie Banacos; and acclaimed guitarist, educator, author, and Rutgers University faculty member Vic Juris.

Mattina serves as director of the Department of Jazz and Caribbean Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He has played, recorded, and toured with renowned artists in jazz and popular music, including bebop legend Dizzy Gillespie, Eddie Gómez, David Sánchez, Ray Armando, John Benitez, the Jesús Caunedo Big Band and Sextet, The Fifth Dimension, The Platters, Juancito Torres, Batacumbele, Victor Pantoja and Grupo Azteca, the Los Angeles City Big Band, Bobby Rodríguez, Giovanni Hidalgo, Charlie Sepúlveda, Rita Moreno, Chita Rivera, and Angela Carrasco. Fernando has also played at some of the main jazz festivals such as the Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Festival, the Medalla Jazz Festival and the Curacao Jazz Festival and represented Puerto Rico at the Puerto Rico Convention Bureau in Chicago in 2001 and 2002. For decades Mattina has led his group and under contract with agencies and organizations they have played at social and private events including performances for companies such as Ford Motor, IBM, and Audio Technica among others.

Mattina has been a faculty member of the Music Department at the Inter-American University of Puerto Rico Metropolitan Campus since 1998 and of the Jazz and Caribbean Music Program at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music since 2008.

fmattina@cmpr.edu

Professor Fidel Morales

Born in Havana, Cuba, Fidel Morales is a drummer, a prominent percussionist, arranger, composer and author of educational methods for the training of drummers and percussionists.

In 1981, he graduated from the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory with the title of Instrumentalist and Percussion Professor. Fidel was an assistant professor of percussion at the National Conservatory of Panama.
He is frequently requested to give master classes and workshops at major conservatories and universities around the world, such as the Berklee College of Music, the University of New England in Boston, the Drummers Collective in New York City, the University of Miami, the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, the Universities of Puerto Rico, Panama, Catholic University of Chile and PASIC (2012 and 2016).

Morales is a professor in the Department of Jazz and Caribbean Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and has held the Jazz Drums chair since 2006. During this time, Fidel served as director of the Conservatory on two occasions and established a prominent Latin drumming school, having graduated dozens of talented and versatile drummers from Puerto Rico, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the United States, and Panama.

As a drummer, he has accompanied renowned jazz and Latin jazz artists such as Eddie Gómez, Danilo Pérez, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Giovanni Hidalgo, Nicolás Reynoso, John Faddis, Mike Orta, Gary Keller, Vic Juris, Gary Campbell, Rodney Jones, Bruce Barth, Barry Green, Teo Ciavarella, Pedrito Martínez, Jerry Medina, Luis "Perico" Ortiz, Charlie Sepúlveda, Justo Almario, Mauricio Smith, Bobby Carcassés, Grupo Interactivo, among many others. He has also accompanied performers such as Elena Burke, Omara Portuondo, Celeste Mendoza, Ela Calvo, Malena, Mayra Caridad Valdés, Noriko, Lena, Gilberto Santa Rosa, among others. He was percussionist with the Panama Symphony Orchestra for over 10 years, under the direction of maestro Jorge Ledezma Bradley.

Fidel is the composer of Cuban dance classics such as “La expresiva” and “Se subir el voltaje,” among others, which marked the beginnings of the timba genre in Cuba. His production Salsa Son Timba was released in 2005 and in 2016 his production “Omío” was released, in which he brought together an “all-star” Latin jazz cast. With “Omío,” Fidel received a nomination as Jazz Soloist at the 2017 Cubadisco awards, as well as excellent reviews and critiques from the world press. This CD was also recognized as one of the best 20 productions of 2016 in Puerto Rico.

Fidel leads his own groups, Fidel Morales Trio, Fidel Morales & Afrocubano and is the author of the books “Afro-Cuban techniques for drums and percussion” (1 and 2). He is sponsored by the companies Vic Firth, Latin Percussion, Gretsch, Gibraltar and Paiste.

https://www.instagram.com/fidemora/

https://www.facebook.com/FidelMoralesMusic/

fmorales@cmpr.edu

Prof. Tommy Lee Ramos Soto
Tommy Lee Ramos Soto is a Puerto Rican percussionist, vibraphonist, and keyboardist born on December 11, 1998, in Río Piedras, San Juan, Puerto Rico. He studied at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he earned a Bachelor's degree in Jazz and Caribbean Music Performance, a Master's degree in Music Education, and two teaching certifications. He also earned a Master's degree in Jazz and Modern Music from the International University of La Rioja in Spain. He is currently a percussionist with the Puerto Rico Concert Band, directed by Maestro Ángel “Cucco” Peña, and a keyboardist with the Juan José and San Juan Habana orchestras of renowned Cuban singer-songwriter Juan José Hernández. He was the official timpanist and percussionist for the Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra. He has distinguished himself in recording musical productions by jazz and Latin jazz artists such as Julito Alvarado, Richard Peña, William García, and Ángel Cuyar, among others. He has performed alongside artists such as Alex Acuña, Miguel Zenón, Pablito Rosario “El Indio”, Giovanni Hidalgo, Edsel Gómez, Oscar Hernández, Jeremy Bosch, Danny Rivera, Chucho Avellanet, Glenn Monroig, Richie Ray, Ismael Miranda, Gilberto Santa Rosa, Sophy Hernández, Raphael de España, and Daddy Yankee, among others. He worked as an educator for the Puerto Rico Department of Education, at the Jesús T. Piñero Specialized Music School in Cidra, in the Música 100x35 program, at the Aspira School in Carolina, and at the Crescendo Music Academy. He is currently working with his project, the Tommy Lee Ramos Trio, and producing his debut album of original compositions for a sextet, titled Ebenezer. 

tramos@cmpr.edu

Professor Orlando Laureano Rivera

olaureano@cmpr.edu

Prof. Ángel D. Mattos Maisonet
Professor Angel David Mattos Maisonet was born in Bayamón, Puerto Rico, on December 21, 1966. The son of parents distinguished in music and education (Dr. Evelyn Maisonet Ramos and Professor Angel M. Mattos de Jesús), he was always involved in musical and artistic activities from a very early age. Mattos formally began his musical education at age 11 at the Escuela Libre de Música de San Juan. He graduated in 1984 with high academic and musical honors, including a Piano Medal. That same year, he began his undergraduate education at the prestigious University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In 1988, he graduated Magna Cum Laude in Music Education with a minor in Jazz Performance with Professor Tony Caramia.

From 1991 to 2019 he served as a music teacher at the Rexville Elementary School, where he founded its Music Program and offered Band, Choir, Rondalla, Keyboard Ensemble, Recorder Group, Percussion Ensemble, Jazz Workshop and General Music. This program was recognized for its success throughout Puerto Rico and awarded by the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico in 1995 and 2016 for its excellence in music education. Mattos completed his master's degree at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico in 2007 and has served as a music professor at the University of Puerto Rico Río Piedras Campus, Interamerican University Metro Campus and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. He has been a speaker at Conventions and Workshops for music teachers at the Conservatory of Music, the University of Puerto Rico, Berklee College of Music in Boston and the Department of Fine Arts of the Department of Education. Ángel David also maintains an artistic career in Jazz. He has recorded 4 compact discs: Preludio (1999), Danzzaj (2004), Traditions (2008) and Alabanzza (2018).

He has collaborated in concerts and recordings with internationally renowned musicians, such as saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera, Bob Mintzer, Mike Stern, Claudio Roditti, Alex Acuña and Luis Perico Ortiz, among others. He has also performed on important stages in New York City such as: the Blue Note, The Triad and Zinc Bar; at Jazz festivals such as: the Puerto Rico Heineken Jazzfest, Mayagiez Jazzfest, Carolina International Jazz Festival, International Jazz Festival in Xalapa, Mexico, Latin Week at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Jazz Festival of the Interamerican University of PR and the Jazz Festival of the Conservatory of Music of PR and festivals in the United States, Central America and the Caribbean. In 2024 he participated with his group Jazz Boricua in the Boricorridor with performances in Boston, Connecticut and New York City bringing the proposal of Puerto Rican dance / jazz, as well as other Puerto Rican styles in fusion with Jazz.

He currently works as Minister of Music at the Zion Lutheran Church in Bayamón, director of the Puerto Rico Teachers Association Choir and the Zion Lutheran Choir, pianist for the Humberto Ramírez Big Band and his own group Jazz Boricua. He has also been musical director of the famous group "Haciendo Punto en otro son" since 2003. He teaches in the Department of Jazz & Caribbean Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

His compositions and arrangements have been included in the repertoires of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Bayamón Symphony Orchestra, the National Choir of Puerto Rico, the Choir of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico (CMPR), the Big Band of the CMPR Jazz Department, the Ars Vocalis Choir, the Humberto Ramírez Jazz Orchestra, and other vocal and instrumental musical ensembles. His music ranges from classical to jazz.

angel.mattos@cmpr.edu

Prof. Emanuel O. Navarro Romero
Prof. Emanuel O. Navarro Romero was born on August 25, 1968 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. His interest in music surfaced at
At the age of 14 he studied organ (full pedal organ or pipe organ) and began playing in
his church. His love for music in all its forms grew very quickly. He soon decided that he wanted
pursue more formal studies in music and better prepare to share their talent.
In 1987, Emanuel was accepted into Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts, where he began
studying piano, jazz and popular music. He graduated cum laude from Berklee College of Music
in 1990, specializing in Jazz composition and arrangement.

After graduating he returned to Puerto Rico to continue learning while playing the piano.
Latin rhythms, especially salsa, with local and international artists. He started as a pianist,
arranger, and recording with well-known artists such as Cano Estremera, Andy Montañez and the Orchestra
Mulenze. He has also collaborated with Cheo Feliciano, Ismael Miranda, Tony Vega, Domingo Quiñones,
Puerto Rican Power Orchestra, Michelle Brava, Gilberto Santarrosa, La India, Tito Nieves among others such as
independent musician.

He has worked as a pianist, arranger, director with artists such as Braulio, Paloma San Basilio, El Topo,
Lucecita Benitez, Danny Rivera, Chucho Avellanet, Alberto Carrion, Ruth Fernandez, Rafael Jose, Jessica
Cristina, Michelle Brava, Dagmar among others.
He has worked with large orchestras such as the PR State Band and the PR Concert Band.
conducted by Cucco Peña, the Quique Talavera Orchestra, the Cesar Concepción Orchestra and the Orchestra
Copacabana.

In 1998 Emanuel began to stand out in the field of jazz and Latin jazz as a pianist, composer,
arranger and on recordings with some Latin Jazz musicians such as Bernie Williams, Tito De Gracia
Naoka Jam, Charlie Sepúlveda, Elliot Feijoo, Humberto Ramírez, Edwin Clemente, Cachete Maldonado,
Pablo «The Indian» Rosario, Chembo Corniel, Batacumbele.
Navarro has 2 recorded Latin Jazz productions: Almas Lúcidas 2014 and My Favorites Standards in
2022.

At the educational level, Emanuel started at the Carolina School of Arts from 2000 to 2004. Then at La
Guaynabo School of Arts from 2005 to 2009. and at the Conservatory of Music of PR from 2010 to
present.

enavarro@cmpr.edu

Professor Pedro Pérez Rivera
Born on September 9, 1966, in the town of Yabucoa, he began his professional career with Andy Montañez's Orchestra in 1986. He participated in many salsa recordings of the 1980s, with artists such as Eddie Santiago, Frankie Ruiz, Lalo Rodríguez, and many others.

In 1997, he completed a Bachelor's degree in Classical Double Bass under the tutelage of Professor Federico Silva at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. Then, in 2009, he completed his second Bachelor's degree in Jazz Double Bass under the tutelage of Professor Gabriel Rodríguez, Eddie Gómez, Luis Ortíz, Marco Pignataro, Luis Marín, among others, at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

He has participated in salsa recordings with most of Puerto Rico's orchestras, as well as several from abroad, including Sonora Ponceña, Willie Rosario, Roberto Rohena, Niche, Gloria Estéfan, and Juan Luis Guerra. He has also toured with El Gran Combo, Luis Marín Trío, Del Sur al Norte, and Picante. He has been a member of the National Salsa Day Orchestra, directed by Luis García, where he has accompanied such stars as Eddie Palmieri, Oscar D' León, Gilberto Santarrosa, and many others.

He currently serves on the faculty of the Jazz program at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and continues to work with various artists as a freelance agent.

pedro.perez@cmpr.edu

Prof. Gabriel Rodriguez
Professor Gabriel Rodríguez is an accomplished musician whose interpretive and creative strength stems from his deep understanding of the core elements of jazz and its Afro-Caribbean roots. This talented artist was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on April 15, 1974. His need for continuous study and exploration of rhythms and styles led him to pursue independent studies. Since the age of fourteen, he has dedicated long hours of study to a mystical approach that today allows him to create a modern interpretation of the music he plays, masterfully blending classical music with aggressive harmonies and other techniques not explored by many contemporary bassists. His unique style, a balanced blend of musicality, knowledge, feeling, and an incredible understanding of his Latin nature have made him one of the most sought-after bassists on the music scene.

The versatility of his interpretation has led him to play with the best Latin jazz musicians in the world. This group includes Charlie Sepúlveda, Dave Valentín, Giovanni Hidalgo, Jerry González, Miguel Zenón, Paoli Mejías, Fidel Morales, William Cepeda, Ángel (Papo) Vázquez, Néstor Torres, Luis “Perico” Ortíz, Batacumbele and many others.

His credentials also include numerous appearances as a sideman for Vic Juris, Pete Rodríguez, Marcos Pignataro, Hologram, Causa Común, Gary Keller, Alex Acuña, Barry Greene, San Juan Collective, Luke Guillespie, James Williams and many others. His experience includes playing on both types of instruments, acoustic and electric bass.

Rodríguez has a master's degree in music education from the PR Conservatory of Music, offers master classes and educational workshops on jazz and improvisation. He has written educational advice columns and recently published his “Manual for the Development of Harmony and Technique.”

He currently works as a professor on the faculty of the Jazz and Caribbean Music Program of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music since 2005 where he teaches electric and acoustic bass.

Website: https://gabybassmusic.com/home

grodriguez@cmpr.edu

Prof. Norberto Ortiz
Professor Norberto Tiko Ortiz is a musician and saxophone professor at the Department of Jazz and Caribbean Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music (DJMC-CMPR), and currently serves as the department's director. He also taught the instrument in the Department of Music at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, for 15 years.

He was born in 1977 and grew up in the town of Las Marías, where he had his first encounter with the saxophone in middle school band class at the Eugenio María de Hostos School. In 1998, he moved to the capital of San Juan, where he pursued higher education at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music in Hato Rey under the tutelage of Ricardo Pons, Alejandro Avilés, Marco Pignataro and Wilfredo Corps. In 2003, he earned a Bachelor of Music in Saxophone Performance and, in 2005, he graduated magna cum laude from the Master of Music in Jazz Performance at the Florida International University School of Music, where he had the opportunity to take classes. with Gary Campbell, Dave Fernandez and Mike Orta.

His main musical influences are Joe Lovano and Joe Henderson, as well as fellow saxophonists David Sánchez and Miguel Zenón. Tiko Ortiz not only works as a professional musician and university professor, but he is a dedicated composer. Together with drummer Raúl Maldonado and bassist and DJMC-CMPR professor Gabriel Rodríguez, he founded the group San Juan Collective. The jazz trio released its first production, of the same name, in 2009, followed in 2012 by Fuera de control, which featured collaborations with Christian Nieves on the cuatro and Charlie Sepúlveda on the trumpet, among other musicians. The band opened 2018 with the production Live, a selection from their live performance at the Intermetro Jazz Festival, which also featured the participation of guitarist Raúl Romero, from the group hologram.

Tiko Ortiz is also part of the sextet Charlie Sepúlveda & the Turnaround. In 2019, he performed at Dizzy's Club – Jazz at Lincoln Center, a performance that later became the recording This Is Latin Jazz (Live). The group received two consecutive Latin Grammy nominations for Best Latin Jazz Album in 2008 and 2009. It was Ortiz who composed the title track for that second nominated production, Sepúlveda Boulevard. In 2017, the group was nominated again in the Best Latin Jazz Album category for Mr. Ep – A Tribute To Eddie Palmieri. And it was with the Charlie Sepúlveda Big Band and the singer Jon Secada that he won the Best Traditional Tropical Album award for his participation in To Beny Moré With Love.

In addition to teaching classes, making recordings and playing in different locations, Tiko Ortiz has performed at national and international jazz festivals, such as Toros y Salsa (France, 2006), Jazz à Pointe-à-Pitre (Guadeloupe, 2007), Puerto Rico Heineken Jazz Fest (Puerto Rico, 2007, 2008 and 2016), Los Angeles Latin Jazz Festival (USA, 2009), Greater Hartford Connecticut Jazz Fest (USA, 2009), Jacksonville Jazz Festival (USA). USA, 2010), Panama Jazz Festival (Panama, 2012), DC Jazz Festival (USA, 2012), the International Jazz and Blues Festival (Mexico, 2018) and the International Jazz Plaza Festival (Cuba, 2019) . Likewise, he has played alongside figures such as Eddie Palmieri, Giovanni Hidalgo, Randy Brecker, Steve Turre, Néstor Torres, Bernie Williams, Eddie Gómez, John Riley, Humberto Ramírez, William Cepeda, Dave Valentín and Luis Perico Ortiz.

Norberto Tiko Ortiz receives sponsorship from JodyJazz mouthpieces.

nortiz@cmpr.edu

Professor Hommy Ramos Vizcarrondo
Professor Hommy Ramos Vizcarrondo, trombonist, composer, arranger and educator
was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 16, 1980. At age 11, Hommy began musical studies.
at the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico. There he was under the direction of Professor Antonio Salcedo and Mariano Morales.

At the age of 17, while a junior in high school, he received a scholarship to study at Berklee College of Music in Boston, MA. where he studied under the direction of Professor Phil Wilson and Greg Hopkins. Hommy graduated with a Bachelor's Degree in Professional Music.
In June 2003, he moved to New York City, where he began his Master's degree at Queens College – New York University with professors Michael Mossman, Antonio Hart, and Luis
Bonilla, from which he graduated in 2005.

In 2007, Professor Ramos received an invitation to join the faculty of the Jazz and Caribbean Music program at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he served as trombone professor and ensemble director for 3 years. Additionally, he worked with La Fania, Roberto Rohena & Apollo Sound star, Humberto Ramirez and his Jazz Orchestra and Hip-Hop artist Tego Calderón.

Hommy Ramos has become the “on call” trombonist of the New York scene. Some of the artists he has worked with are: Andy Montañez, William Cepeda, Johnny Rivera, Danilo Pérez, José Alberto “El Canario”, Giovanny Hidalgo, John Benítez and Paquito de Rivera to mention a few. He has also worked for the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater of New York, the Steven Oquendo Latin Jazz Orchestra, the Ray Charles Tribute Big Band, On The Move Company, among others.
Currently, Hommy Ramos resides in New York City and released his first album (EP format), 'TROMBEATZ – A CARIBBEAN THING', which was released in the spring of 2019. He teaches at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music as a Professor of Jazz Trombone, he is a member of Los Pleneros de la 21, Grammy-winning Eddie Montalvo Orchestra, World Acclamation Latin Jazz Group Timbalaye and Mood Society Music Collective and Around, Compañía Municipal de Entretenimiento. His past performances on Broadway include the musicals: “Me Gustó Así” and “Flaco Navaja: Evolución de un Sonero”.

hramos@cmpr.edu

Prof. Marcos J. Rodríguez Curet

jcuret@cmpr.edu

Professor Elías Santos Celpa

Elías Santos Celpa, EdD (abd)

Born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Puerto Rico at the age of five, he grew up in a music-oriented family where his mother played guitar and sang, as well as other family members. He began his formal studies in music at the age of sixteen, at the Carolina School of Fine Arts and simultaneously at the Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan.

Santos-Celpa has doctoral studies in Educational Management and Leadership from the Inter-American University of PR. He completed a Master of Arts in the concentration of Jazz Performance, from the Aaron Copland Conservatory, at the University of Queens College in NY. In this, he was under the tutelage of renowned international musicians such as: Ted Rosenthal, Buster Williams, Antonio Hart, Michael Phillip Mossman and legendary bassist Ron Carter. After completing his studies, in December 2005 he was recognized at Lincoln Center by the ASCAP Foundation with the Louis Armstrong Award as a jazz composer. He has a Certificate in Biblical and Theological Studies from the Theological University of the Caribbean. He graduated from the Conservatory with a bachelor's degree in Musical Education with a specialty in double bass.

As a performing musician and arranger, he has developed in different styles, participating with artists and groups of the caliber of: Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of the Americas (FOSJA), Queens College Symphony, Carlos Barbosa Lima, Sofi, Lucy Fabery, Nydia Caro, Las Caribels, Cano Estremera, Tony Vega, Huey Dumbar, Rey Ruiz, DLG, Charlie Cruz, David & Abraham, Son by Four, Orbie Bermúdez, Bayanga (later Calle 13), León de Judá, José Ferrer, Edwin Cotto , Lilly Goodman, Damaris Grillo, Yamil Ledesma, Luis Córdoba, Ezequiel Colón, Rene González, Samuel Hernández, Los Tres Pianistas, Jorge Vizcarrondo, Proyecto Evif, Berkley at PR Big Band, Carli Muñoz trio, William Cepeda, Elliot Feijó, Humberto Ramírez , David Sánchez, Furito Ríos, Paoli Mejías, Michael Mossman, Tammy Shoji, Bobby Sanabria, Hector Mangtiñon, Antonio Hart, Conrad Herwig, Néstor Torres, Giovanny Hidalgo, Allyson Briggs and Mark Levine among others.

As a producer, in 2015 he released the album Antología, his first album, which was initially born as an educational project. Later, “Aguinaldo Jíbaro” (2019) comes out with his Borinqueneer Jazz Trio. Also, in 2012, he published his “New Children's Songbook of Puerto Rican Culture”; an educational resource for early and elementary teachers.

Active in this area, he has continued producing for other discography, which highlights: “Ha Nacido” & “Jesús” (2009) Rene González, “A Cantar ya Learn” (2012) Despertar Musical, “En Intimidad” (2016) ) Shirley & Ashley, “40” (2019) & “My Kind of Christmas” (2020) Fidel Osorio, “Ser” (2020) Gonchi Sifre and recently “Resplandece” (2022) Paola Rivera.

In the field of education, he has worked in different spheres and levels such as: elementary level teacher at DE, teacher at the Carolina School of Fine Arts and theory professor at the University of PR. He has also worked as a curriculum specialist in the central level of the Department of Education, participating in the development of the projects: Establishing Connections Through the Fine Arts (2006), and the Content Standards and Expectations of the Degree in Fine Arts (2007). He has been a curriculum integration and planning trainer for teachers in the public system, in the Aesthetic Education congresses of PR (2007 & 2008) and in the School District of the Arts project (2012). He has carried out educational projects for the Banco Popular Foundation, such as “Revive the Music; The Concert” from 2010 to 2019; arranging, coordinating and directing an orchestra of over 90 young people where he has shared with: Millo Torres, NG2, Yaire, La Secta, Siete, Black Guayaba, Cultura Profética and Tommy Torres. Also for the Foundation, he developed the curriculum for the “Musical Acceleration” Project in 2018. In this area, he has served as a curricular developer for entities such as the Theological University of the Caribbean (baccalaureate in Sacred Music-2019) and Covenant Private School (elementary to higher -2021).

He serves as Associate Professor of the PR Conservatory of Music, although he has held administrative positions such as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (2012 & 2015), Academic Advisor (2009-present) and Department Director. In addition, in 2014 he was in charge of the musical direction of the Música 100 x 35 program, where he was entrusted with the “Misión Salsa” project; only concert performed by El Gran Combo de PR together with a symphony orchestra.

In the Jazz and Caribbean Music high school, he teaches the specialty courses; History of Jazz, Thematic Combos, Seminar on Improvisation and Jazz Solfeggio. He also serves as one of the four directors of the institution's Conjunto Mayores, directing the Concert Jazz Band since 2008. This group has performed at Galas at the Ponce Museum, to town festivals in the Fortress. In its concert billboards it has had the participation of renowned artists such as: Quique Talavera, Luis Perico Ortiz, Luis Bonilla, Pete Rodríguez, Edsel Gómez, Ignacio Berroa, Vic Juris, Alexis Cole, Ray Vega, Bruce Bart, Aric Schneller, Jerry Bergonzzi, Joey Tartell, Carlos Henríquez and Miguel Zenón among others.

esantos@cmpr.edu

Prof. Kimberly García

He was born on October 16, 1990 into a family of musicians. Since she was little she stood out in the world of theater and music and during her growing years she belonged to several musical, dance and theatrical groups, the Theater Group of the Municipality of San Germán being the most prominent in its development within the popular, acting world. and musical theater. She graduated in 2014 with a bachelor's degree in vocal performance and musical education from the Inter-American University of San Germán and in 2017 she graduated with a master's degree in vocal performance from the Miramar Conservatory of Music. He has worked in opera festivals in San Luis Potosí, Mexico and shared lyrical stages with Sondra Radvanovsky and Joseph Calleja in concert with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.
She has worked in prominent musical theater festivals in New York such as “Theater Now” and in workshops such as “Actor Therapy” founded by Tony winner Lindsay Méndez and also stands out as a singer-songwriter mastering various Caribbean styles.

k.garcia@cmpr.edu

Prof. Ariana Loren Delgado Ramos

Ariana Lorén Delgado is a Puerto Rican singer-songwriter, performer, and voice educator. She formally began her vocal studies in classical singing at age 11 and in her teens began performing professionally at festivals around the island and in the United States singing a repertoire of boleros.

Ariana continued her musical studies until she obtained a Bachelor's degree in classical singing from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. For 5 years, she was a soprano in the Orfeón San Juan Bautista, performing in Canada, Colombia, Boston and New York City. Then, in 2015, she moved to Barcelona to continue her musical studies and obtained a Master's degree in Jazz and Modern Music singing from the Conservatorio del Liceo (2017), and a Master's degree in Music Therapy from the University of Barcelona - IL3. (2019). Ariana has also completed certification studies in Estill Voice Training and the Gordon Music Learning Theory; which has allowed her to have broad and varied experience in children's, adolescent and adult music education.

During her time in Spain, she has had the opportunity to lead Latin, Latin American and jazz music groups, performing on various stages in the province of Barcelona, Zaragoza and Santiago de Compostela.

In 2024, Ariana released her debut album titled "Desde Adentro" which includes her original songs, produced by acclaimed Cuban singer Gema Corredera, along with musical arrangements by Cuatrista Pablo Hernández Mejías. Her album covers the genres of bolero, Puerto Rican dance, son and bomba, embracing the richness of Puerto Rican music within Latin fusion.

Ariana has collaborated with artists and musicians such as Danny Rivera, Kelvis Ochoa, Gema Corredera, Carmen Nydia Velazquez, Michael Kanin, Joey Baron, among others. Currently, Ariana Lorén is an active artist dedicated to performance and voice education.

adelgado@cmpr.edu

Professor Jesús D. Colón Flores
Professor Jesús Colón is a bassist, singer, and music educator, a graduate of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he completed both his Bachelor's degree in Jazz and Afro-Caribbean Music Performance and his Master's degree in Music Education.

From an early age, he demonstrated a natural affinity for music, initially exploring percussion, piano, and guitar. His musical development took a definitive turn when he began formal electric bass studies with maestro Sammy Morales at the Guaynabo School of Fine Arts, where he first encountered jazz—a genre that would define his artistic identity. He later entered the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he delved deeper into double bass playing and Afro-Caribbean music.

As an accompanist, Colón has shared the stage with prominent figures in Puerto Rican and international jazz, including Humberto Ramírez, Miguel Zenón, William Cepeda, Julito Alvarado, Richard Peña, Jonathan Suazo, Fabiola Méndez, and Luis "Perico" Ortiz. His artistic approach is characterized by the expressive integration of voice and double bass, highlighting the melodic dimension of both instruments together.

As an educator, he currently serves as a bass professor and director of the Jazz Workshop at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and as a band and digital music teacher at Colegio San Ignacio de Loyola. Starting in 2025, he will join the faculty of Jazz Music Theory in the Department of Jazz and Afro-Caribbean Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, an institution he considers fundamental to his training and career.

Colón has released several singles and two albums: Jazz Sessions – Live at The Cannon Club and Numbers. He is currently working on new projects that explore the intersection of jazz, Puerto Rican music, and contemporary elements.

Professor Ariel Guzmán Figueroa

Ariel Guzmán Figueroa is a music education professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he also serves as the liaison for the College Board’s Office for Puerto Rico and Latin America and as an advisor to the university chapter of NAfME: National Association for Music Education. He is a graduate of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music (PRCM) and the School of Music, Theatre, and Dance at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He remains active as a horn player with the Puerto Rico Concert Band (affiliated with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra Corporation) and with the Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra Arturo Somohano. He also served as a teacher of music theory and solfège in the Special String Program for Children at the PRCM (now Preparatory School) and as music director of the Band Program at the Escuela Libre de Música de San Juan and the Symphonic Band of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. In addition to his roles as a music educator, he has held administrative positions at the Conservatory of Music, including coordinator of the Extension and Continuing Education Program (now part of the Preparatory School), director of the Department of Music Education, interim chancellor, and dean of academic and student affairs. He also served two terms as a commissioner for the Middle States Commission on Higher Education (MSCHE), serving on three of its working committees: the Committee on Follow-Up Activities, the Committee on Evaluation Reports, and the Committee on Mid-Point Peer Review. He currently continues to collaborate with MSCHE as a peer evaluator.

aguzman@cmpr.edu

Dr. Marta Hernández Candelas
Dr. Marta Hernández Candelas has an intense career of dedication to the use of music for the integral benefit of human beings. She is an Associate Professor at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where she offers graduate and undergraduate courses in Music Education and Music Therapy. She holds a Doctorate in Music Education from a Multidisciplinary Perspective from the University of Granada in Spain, a Bachelor's degree in Viola Performance and a Master's degree in String Pedagogy, both from Temple University, and a second Master's degree in Music Therapy from Illinois State University. She is also certified as a music therapist by the Certification Board of Music Therapists (CBMT) and as an educator by the Puerto Rico Department of Education, the Suzuki Association of the Americas, and in the Orff and Kindermusik methods. She was an Elementary Music teacher at the University of Puerto Rico and a music educator in various public programs in Philadelphia. She is also co-author of the early childhood music education project Despertar Musical (Musical Awakening) and was the first coordinator of the Suzuki Program at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music Preparatory School. She currently directs the Puerto Rico Suzuki Violin Association and has been offering music therapy services in the HIMA San Pablo hospital system since 2013. She also works with a variety of settings, including medical, perinatal, neurocritical, oncology, trauma, HIV, victims of violence, and special education music therapy. She also collaborates on music therapy projects with the Música y País Foundation, Music Alliance, and the Ryan White Part C Program Provider Network of Lares, Inc. In the musical artistic field, she has collaborated as a professional violist with the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra, the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Illinois Symphony Orchestra, and various chamber music ensembles. She has also participated in numerous training courses on therapeutic methods for hospitalized infants in the Intensive Care Unit and neurological music therapy. She has published articles in the following peer-reviewed journals: Musiké, Revista Psicodidáctica, National Association of Laboratory Schools Journal [NALS], Research Perspectives in Music Education, Arts Education Policy Review, Eufonía, and MUSIKE. She also collaborated on a chapter in the book "Music in Early Childhood Education: Research and Music" (Gluschankov & Pérez, 2017).

MHernandez@cmpr.edu

Dr. Juan C. Vega Martínez
Dr. Juan Carlos Vega-Martínez has a history of active participation in music, and diverse experience as a music educator. He currently teaches music pedagogy courses at the graduate level at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, the “AP Music Theory” online course at “Arrupe Virtual Learning Institute” (AVLI), and is established as an independent pianist/keyboardist and music producer. . He collaborated for 24 years at the San Ignacio de Loyola School in San Juan, PR; where he launched the music department, directed the men's choir, and assumed leadership positions as Fine Arts Coordinator. Having taught at all levels of education, he is familiar with innovative approaches to music education and research-based practice. His extensive experience in teaching is based on facilitating the learning of music in multiple settings, whether oriented to the individual needs of students, or to the management of various musical groups. He obtained a Doctorate in Musical Arts in Music Education from Boston University, a Master's Degree in Education from Cambridge College, and a Bachelor's Degree in Music Education from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He also has a Certificate in “Piano Pop Performance” from “Berklee College of Music” in Boston.

As an independent musician, he has served for more than 25 years as pianist of the Puerto Rico Concert Band, and works regularly with: Gilberto Santa Rosa (keyboards), Lucecita Benítez (arranger), Ángel “Cucco” Peña, the Philharmonic Orchestra of PR, among others. He composed the soundtrack for the film “La Llamarada”, winner of an Emmy Award in 2016, and for Bienvenido Don Goyito (2017). In musical theater, he acted as choral director, pianist-keyboardist and assistant director in the musical Jesús Súper Estrella (1998), pianist in the musical Chicago (2003), “Cabaret” (2011 and 2022), “La Cage Aux Folles” (2013), “The Phantom of the Opera” (2015), Pegados (2019), among other productions. As community social/educational work, he directed the Alumni Chamber Choir of the University of Puerto Rico, advises the Martin Luther King, Jr. Dialogue Table, and directed for several years the Municipal Orchestra of Juana Díaz, his beloved hometown. He belongs to the Board of Directors of the Rigoberto Figueroa-Figueroa Foundation, and serves as an advisor for educational projects of the Pablo Casals Foundation in PR. He is the author of the book Brief History of Music in Puerto Rico (2001), and producer & musical director of the project, Popssical – Classical goes to Latin (2005).

juan.vega@cmpr.edu

Dr. Moraima García Rohena, Special Education and Human Growth and Development
Dr. Moraima García-Rohena is a clinical psychologist with a specialty in developmental disabilities from the Graduate School of Public Health at the Medical Sciences Campus and a postdoctoral degree in interdisciplinary approaches to child and adolescent mental health from the University of Barcelona.

She is also an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Sciences at the Faculty of General Studies and the Faculty of Education at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and Coordinator of the Certificate and Master's Degree in Autism Sciences and other Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Carlos Albizu University. As part of her private practice, she works with people with functional diversity, primarily those with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Her work with this population includes guiding, coordinating, and forging collaborative agreements with various agencies, institutions, and universities in Puerto Rico and abroad, with the goal of preparing young people with autism and their families for the transition to adulthood. She also conducts evaluations and interventions aimed at early diagnosis identification in order to develop therapeutic and service objectives based on scientific evidence.

He is an active member of the Association of School Psychologists of PR, the Psychology Association of PR

Professor Abdiel Flores
Professor Abdiel Flores is a Puerto Rican educator, entrepreneur, and musician with over 20 years of experience. As an entrepreneur, he has excelled in digital media strategy, marketing, and graphic design consulting for artists such as Miguel Zenón, Charlie Haden, Paoli Mejías, Henry Cole, Julius Tolentino, Pat Donaher, Ramón Vázquez, Mimi Jones, and Isaac Laussell, among others. He has also offered his services to multinational companies such as LP®, BDO, ESPN Latin America, AOL, and Wyndham Hotels, as well as multiple state and federal government agencies in Puerto Rico.

Abdiel Flores has a Bachelor's Degree in Communications from the Universidad del Sagrado Corazón and belonged to the first class of the Jazz and Afro-Caribbean Music program at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He is currently completing a master's degree in Strategic Management and Leadership (MBA) at the Ana G. Méndez University.

As a saxophonist, Flores has participated and collaborated with other Puerto Rican musicians in various performances and recordings. As a leader, he recorded the album titled "El Cuidad de Mi" in 2011 with Ramón Vázquez, Elías Celpa, Leobadis González and Isaac Laussell. This album opened the doors for him to create the 'Music for the Soul' project, a series of musical performances in vulnerable sectors with very little access to artistic experiences.

Currently, Flores combines his business and musical experiences to offer the Professional Skills for Musicians and Marketing courses at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. In addition, he has been part of the team of mentors for the Musical Acceleration program of the Banco Popular de Puerto Rico Foundation, giving talks on musical entrepreneurship to talented young people.

abdiel.flores@cmpr.edu

Gerardo Cintron-Rosario

Professor Gerardo Cintrón-Rosario is an attorney specializing in entertainment, sports, and intellectual property. He graduated magna cum laude from the UPR Law School's joint JD/MPA program in 2021 and then earned an LLM in Entertainment, Arts, and Sports, cum laude, from the University of Miami, where he specialized in Entertainment and Sports. Gerardo has been with Rimas Entertainment since August 2022 and previously worked at O'Neill & Borges in the corporate practice. He currently serves as a Mentor for the UPR Law School's Sports and Entertainment Law Probono Program, where he shares his experience and knowledge with future lawyers interested in these fields. During his law school days, he interned and worked as a law clerk at McConnell Valdés and was part of the Sports and Entertainment Law Probono Program.

gcintron@cmpr.edu

Professor Carmen Rivera-Lassén

carmen.rivera@cmpr.edu

Professor Haydeé Alvarado Santos
In January 2015, Professor Alvarado Santos arrived at the Conservatory of Music to teach English courses after several years of having retired as a professor from the Faculty of General Studies of the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico (UPR-RP) where she had a long professional career.

She earned her bachelor's degree from the Faculty of Humanities with a concentration in English language and literature. When she graduated with a master's degree in teaching English from the Faculty of Education, she had already passed all the courses for the master's degree in English from the Faculty of Humanities. She subsequently took courses toward her doctorate at the Puerto Rico Program at New York University, and at the Faculty of Humanities, UPR-RP.

Her career as a professor at UPR-RP began simultaneously with her master's studies in the Faculty of Humanities; she taught second-year English requirement courses. Later, as a professor in the Faculty of General Studies, she taught English courses at all levels; from courses focused on preparing students for the required courses, to the second-year advanced course with an interdisciplinary approach and emphasis on writing. She also taught the second-year English writing course in the Faculty of Humanities and in the UPR-RP Honors Program. She collaborated with the Special Academic Services Program (PSAE) of the Faculty of General Studies for many years, during which she designed experimental courses, including the Pre-Basic English course, coordinated levels, and worked on several PSAE proposals for the federal Department of Education. In her department, she created the English Writing Workshop. At the faculty level, she coordinated the work of the interdisciplinary project of the Experimental Program of the Department of General Studies in the Faculty and designed the English course in said project. She also participated in the creation and implementation phases of an experimental interdisciplinary project in which four professors from different academic disciplines (Spanish, English, biological sciences and humanities) designed, organized and taught the course concurrently.

In addition to her academic and administrative work with her department and faculty, for many years she collaborated with the College Board of Puerto Rico in different capacities: she wrote items for the ESLAT exam and the Advanced Placement exam; she coordinated the committee in charge of preparing the ESLAT and served as an editor for both exams. She has corrected the English writing portion of the PCMA exams. She also collaborated with the College Board on projects abroad: among others, the committee that created the TESL test for Mexico and South American countries. For several years, she was a trainer of English teachers for the Department of Education of Puerto Rico, as part of the Critical Thinking Project, directed by Dr. Ángel Villarini.

In her academic and administrative career, she was a member and coordinator of the English Department's personnel committee on several occasions. She was the director of the English Department on three occasions and headed the General Studies Bachelor's Program Department at the faculty of the same name.
At the Río Piedras Campus, he collaborated with various projects and committees: in the Self-Study processes, in its various stages, as part of the Campus' reaccreditation under multiple administrations and with the complicated process of reconceptualizing the general education component, a requirement for all bachelor's degrees at the UPR-RP.

Outside of the Campus, she is a member of her community's Board and the G-8 (Group of Eight Communities Surrounding the Martín Peña Canal) as well as the Board of Directors of the ENLACE Corporation; she participates in the G-8 Literacy Program as a volunteer teacher and as a member of the curriculum committee. She also collaborates with the editorial committee of the community newspaper, Raíces.
At the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico he has found a new setting to practice the profession he loves: teaching.

haydee.alvarado@cmpr.edu

Prof. Setare Milantchi Yassami
Professor Setare Milantchi Yassami has taught French and German at the University of Puerto Rico – Río Piedras, the Alliance Française, and the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. She is also a certified examiner for the Goethe-Institut. Professor Milantchi received her bachelor's degree in Russian and economics from Oberlin College and her master's degree in Russian studies from Yale University. She also received her master's degree from Yale in Slavic languages and literatures with a minor in 20th-century German literature.

Raised in Hamburg, Germany and of Iranian descent, Prof. Milantchi is fluent in English, Spanish, French, German, Farsi and Russian and has reading skills in Polish, Czech and Italian. In the classroom, her pedagogical philosophy incorporates communicative techniques and integrated content. It also uses games, long-term projects, and cooperative tactics.

smilantchi@cmpr.edu

Prof. Alberto Guidobaldi
BM in Composition, MM in Music Education.

Originally from Savona, Italy, he has resided in Puerto Rico since 1993.
Among his numerous compositions, the following stand out: the comic opera The Story of He Who Married a Mute Woman, the opera-oratorio The Sacramental Auto of the Three Wise Men, Gloria for soprano, choir, organ and percussion, Stabat Mater for soloists, choir and orchestra, Concertino for two oboes and orchestra, and Concertino for clarinet and orchestra.
His extensive and varied production also includes a cappella choral works, art songs, Puerto Rican dances, duets and works for smaller ensembles.

Almost all of his chamber music is published by Jeanné Music Publications, Alry Music publications.
He has received several awards in different international and national composition competitions, among them the 1st place in the National Flute Association Flute Choir Composition Competition with the work "Tarantella for 12 flutes", the honorable mention of the National Clarinet Association Composition Competition for the suite "The Adventures of Pinocchio" for Clarinet and piano, and the Juan Morel Campos Award from the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, awarded to his piano dance "Un supiro".
At the end of 2025, her new opera "Eva Luna" will premiere, based on the novel of the same name by Isabel Allende, with a libretto by Betty Kaplan.

Since 2010 he has been a professor of Music Theory at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.
 

aguidobaldi@cmpr.edu

Dr. Álvaro M. Rivera Ruiz
Dr. Álvaro Manuel Rivera Ruiz is a professor at the University of Puerto Rico at Carolina and at the Conservatory of Music. He earned his doctorate in Caribbean History from the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. He is the author of Aguadilla: The Town That Turned Its Back on the Sea and Political Violence and Colonial Subalternity: The Case of Filiberto Ojeda and the MIRA 1960-1972. He also works as a historical researcher and cultural consultant for public and private entities.

alvaro.rivera@cmpr.edu

Prof. Diana Rivera
Alexander Technique Teacher, Craniosacral Therapist, Aquatic Therapy Facilitator, educator and actress.

Graduated in Performing Arts from the University of Puerto Rico (2010). In 2013 he settled in Madrid, Spain to continue his professional training. In 2018 she graduated as a Professor of Alexander Technique from the Center for Constructive Teaching in Madrid. In 2020, she was certified in the “Developing Self” program for the application and integration of the Alexander Technique in primary, secondary and higher education. Her desire to continue developing leads her to become certified in Craniosacral Osteopathy and Aquatic Therapy. She is currently a Professor of Alexander Technique at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and an Aquatic Therapy Facilitator at KinFloat Aqua Wellness Center. Additionally, she conducts her individual practice as a craniosacral therapist and Alexander Technique teacher.

His discovery of the Alexander Technique began at the same time that he studied theater at the University of Puerto Rico. Viveca Vázquez, one of its most influential dance and movement teachers, applied the technique in her classes and that is where she began to link the entire relationship between body, mind, movement and space.

During this period he was part of the Jóvenes del 98 theater company directed by Maritza Pérez, with whom he taught theater workshops and developed plays for different communities.

After completing her university studies, she continued her professional artistic career, which she combines as a theater teacher teaching at the primary, secondary and higher levels. Attend individual Alexander Technique classes with teacher Karen Langevin. He integrates what he learned into his daily life and experiences notable changes in the use and management of his body. His body aches and constant hoarseness begin to disappear.

Already in Madrid, he continues with his studies and his path towards pedagogy. Take individual Alexander Technique classes with Professor Simon Fitzgibbon and Marta Barón. Already convinced of the benefits of work, she decides to train as a teacher at the Constructive Teaching Center. There he trains with different teachers, all graduates of the Constructive Teaching Center in London, directed at the time by Walter Carrington.

To continue her training, between 2019-2020, she traveled to the city of Bristol where she completed a certification of the application and integration of the Alexander Technique in elementary, primary and higher education with teachers and pedagogues Judith Kleinman and Sue Merry.

In Madrid he continues in the world of teaching, working with children and adolescents. At the same time, he teaches individual and group Alexander Technique classes. Later he began his certification in Aquatic Therapy at Watsupath and became certified in Craniosacral Osteopathy at the Chiromassage School in Madrid.

In 2021 he travels to Puerto Rico to continue his path in the water. In 2022 he returns and settles in Puerto Rico. She is currently a professor of Alexander Technique at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, is an Aquatic Therapy Facilitator at KinFloat Aqua Wellness Center and also carries out her individual practice as a craniosacral therapist and teaches Alexander Technique classes on an individual level.

d.rivera@cmpr.edu

Professor María del Carmen Gil
Professor María del Carmen Gil Venzal has been critically acclaimed as “a pianist of rare musical intelligence, dazzling technique, beautiful sound, and a provocative interpretive style.” Throughout her career, she has performed in Puerto Rico, the Caribbean, Central America, South America, and the United States in recitals, as a soloist with orchestra, as a piano duo, as a chamber musician, and as a collaborative pianist. She has played under the baton of renowned conductors, shared the stage with international artists, presided over and served as a judge in international piano competitions, and premiered works by Puerto Rican composers. She is the founder of the Gil y Figueroa Duo, along with her colleague Diana Figueroa, an ensemble in residence at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. This ensemble has performed in concerts throughout Puerto Rico and the United States and maintains an active concert season on the island. The Gil y Figueroa Duo is the founder of MultipianoFest, an unprecedented piano event in Puerto Rico that brings together pianists of all ages in a grand annual concert with 32 pianos on stage. This innovative piano extravaganza has benefited more than 500 pianists from all over the island in its six (6) editions.
The pianist began musical studies in Cuba at an early age and continued her musical and piano development in Puerto Rico at the Escuela Libre de Música and the PR Conservatory of Music. His undergraduate and graduate studies in Piano Performance were completed at the prestigious Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University. His piano training process includes renowned local and international pianists, such as: Cecilia Talavera, Jesús Maria Sanromá, Ellen Mack, Leon Fleisher and Adele Marcus.
His musical career has been multifaceted, combining his piano career with teaching and administrative management, serving in important leadership positions inside and outside of Puerto Rico. At the Conservatory, she is currently Professor of the piano faculty and has also been director of the Piano Department. She served as Dean of Studies of the institution and held the position of Rector for fifteen years, the longest-lasting rectorship in the history of the institution. Her career as rector is prolific, being the author of comprehensive and transformative institutional changes that moved the Conservatory into the 21st century. To mention a few, they are her work: the new headquarters of the Conservatory in Miramar; the new Master's and Graduate Diploma degrees in all specialties; the Jazz and Caribbean Music program; the Musical Awakening and Música 100×35 programs; the business center for musicians; High school; among other comprehensive curricular, programmatic and institutional transformations that positively resized the institution for the 21st century.
María del Carmen Gil Venzal is founder and president of the Musica y País Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting social transformation programs through music, another of her great passions. Through a platform of three programs: Music for All, the PR Youth Symphony Orchestra and Música para Sanar, Música y País promotes access to musical education and has benefited thousands of children and young people throughout the Island since its creation.
His local and international leadership projects include: presidency of the Music Council of the Three Americas; the vice presidency of the International Music Council; founder and president of the Latin American Association of Conservatories and Music Schools; founder of the ArteSanturce Alliance; founder and president of the Puerto Rican Alliance for the Arts; Commissioner of the Higher Accreditation Commission of the National Association of Schools of Music (NASM); and the presidency of the PR chapter of the World Piano Teachers Association, among other roles as an educational and cultural leader. For her local and international leadership she has been recognized with important distinctions.

mcgil@cmpr.edu

Prof. Diana Figueroa Brañuelas

Diana Figueroa

Puerto Rican pianist Diana Figueroa is a graduate of the Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, MD. She has been a professor of piano and piano pedagogy at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico since 2004.
In 1980, she won First Place in the Jesús María Sanromá Piano Competition sponsored by the Asociación Pro Orquesta Sinfónica (APOS) of Puerto Rico, an occasion that marked her debut as a soloist with the Orchestra under the direction of John Barnett. During her career she has performed as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Symphony Orchestra of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, the Philharmonic Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of the Free School of Music of San Juan. As a collaborating pianist she has performed for the Casals Festival, the Inter-American Festival of the Arts and Pro Arte Musical, among others. Figueroa is a member of the Sanromá Trio and the Gil – Figueroa piano duo, both institutional ensembles of the Conservatory of Music.
As a member of the Trio Sanromá, together with his colleagues Francisco Caban and Luis Miguel Rojas, he has performed complete cycles of the Beethoven and Brahms trios, as well as works by Arensky, Shostakovich, Mendelssohn, Turina, Piazzolla and other contemporary composers. In the 2023-24 season, he premiered the Triple Concerto by the composer Raymond Torres-Santos, a work dedicated to the Trio Sanromá and commissioned by the PR Symphony Orchestra. The Trio Sanromá also performed in two concerts for the Casals Festival in its virtual editions in 2020 and 2021 and in person at the Symphony Hall for Pro Arte Musical in the season celebrating the ninetieth anniversary of its foundation.

As a member of the Duo Gil y Figueroa, together with his colleague María del Carmen Gil, they regularly perform in concerts inside and outside the Conservatory with repertoire for two pianos and four hands. They also perform every year the Multipiano Fest, an event that brings together children and young pianists in a grand concert with an orchestra of 30 pianos conducted by Roselin Pabón.
Figueroa has recorded the albums Canción de Arte para Niños y Adultos with Corazón de Niño and El Paisaje y su sombra with Puerto Rican mezzo-soprano Ilca López. He has also recorded the album Caribe Clarinete with clarinetist Katheleen Jones and Contemporary Puerto Rican Works with the Conjunto Camerata Caribe.

diana.figueroa@cmpr.edu

Prof. María L. Rodríguez Valderrabano
Professor María L. Rodríguez Valderrabano, better known as Marisa García, holds a degree from the Royal Conservatory of Madrid, Spain, where she received the Extraordinary Prize in Chamber Music and the unanimous First Prize in the "End of Degree in Piano" award. This award grants her admission to the "Piano Virtuosity" course offered by the renowned Spanish pianist José Cubiles, a course she attended for four years.

He offered Chamber Music concerts with the Spanish violinist Enrique García Asensio, now a renowned orchestra director. He went on a concert tour with the Valladolid Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Maestro Vicente Spiteri. He continued his career as a concert pianist under the tutelage of the famous Argentine pianist Américo Caramuta, author of the treatise “Phenomenology of Pianistic Technique.”

He lived in the United States and Germany for eight years. Upon moving to Puerto Rico for family reasons and to get involved in the country's musical life, he studied with Maestro Jesús María Sanromá and performed as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

Since 1982 she belongs to the Piano Department of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music where she works as a professor.

mrodriguez@cmpr.edu

Prof. Alberto Guidobaldi
BM in Composition, MM in Music Education.

Originally from Savona, Italy, he has resided in Puerto Rico since 1993.
Among his numerous compositions, the following stand out: the comic opera The Story of He Who Married a Mute Woman, the opera-oratorio The Sacramental Auto of the Three Wise Men, Gloria for soprano, choir, organ and percussion, Stabat Mater for soloists, choir and orchestra, Concertino for two oboes and orchestra, and Concertino for clarinet and orchestra.
His extensive and varied production also includes a cappella choral works, art songs, Puerto Rican dances, duets and works for smaller ensembles.

Almost all of his chamber music is published by Jeanné Music Publications, Alry Music publications.
He has received several awards in different international and national composition competitions, among them the 1st place in the National Flute Association Flute Choir Composition Competition with the work "Tarantella for 12 flutes", the honorable mention of the National Clarinet Association Composition Competition for the suite "The Adventures of Pinocchio" for Clarinet and piano, and the Juan Morel Campos Award from the Puerto Rican Institute of Culture, awarded to his piano dance "Un supiro".
At the end of 2025, her new opera "Eva Luna" will premiere, based on the novel of the same name by Isabel Allende, with a libretto by Betty Kaplan.

Since 2010 he has been a professor of Music Theory at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico.
 

aguidobaldi@cmpr.edu

Professor Luis A. Bermúdez
A native of Naranjito, Professor Bermúdez has distinguished himself as a trumpet player in both classical and popular music. He is a founding member of the Sine Nomine Brass Ensemble and director of the Metalissimo Brass Quintet, for which he has composed most of the Puerto Rican and other dance arrangements. He has served as Director of the Theory and Composition Department at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, and as Director of the Brass Ensemble and the Popular and Jazz Music Workshop at the UPR Rio Piedras Campus. He holds a Master's Degree in Music Education from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC, and a Bachelor's Degree (summa cum laude) in the same field from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

Professor Bermúdez has been associated with the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music since its beginnings as a student in 1979 and then as a professor since 1989. He currently works as a trumpet player with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and as a professor of music theory and history of Western music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

lbermudez@cmpr.edu

Professor Victor Meléndez Dohnert

Puerto Rican Pianist, Composer and Educator.
His artistic presentations as a pianist and composer include: recitals, chamber music concerts, choir and as an interpreter of his works, at classical, jazz and Puerto Rican music festivals, in the United States, Europe, Central America and the Caribbean.
He made his debut as a soloist with the Symphony Orchestra of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, under the direction of Maestro Roselín Pabón, performing Rhapsody in Blue by George Gershwin.
He frequently performs as a pianist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and the Philharmonic Orchestra, in special concerts, both classical and popular music. He has played under the musical direction of Maestros Rafael E. Irizarry, Maximiano Valdés, Lalo Schifrin, Henry Mancini, Jorge Calandrelli, Angel Vélez and Conrad Pope.
His works have been presented at the Casals Festival, Pro Arte Musical and Inter-American Festival
of the Arts.

He has been pianist, arranger and composer in residence for the prestigious San Juan Children's Choir and children's choir director. Maestro Meléndez has a wide collection of children's song compositions.
Victor Melendez Döhnert has served as pianist for Maestros Lito Peña, Cuco Peña and Pedro Rivera Toledo, where he has participated in multiple events and recordings. As a collaborative pianist, he has worked with various artists, such as Andy Williams, Lola
Flores, Sara Vaughn, Chita Rivera, José Feliciano, Plácido Domingo, Ana María Martínez,
Lucesita Benitez and Ruth Fernandez.

He has served as Musical Director of the WIPRTV Radio Station in children's and cultural programs, Director of the Special Strings Program for Children of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and pianist in Opera, Zarzuela and Musical Comedy companies. He has received several awards and distinctions such as: First gold medal as best instrumentalist from the Arturo Somohano Foundation, first prizes in the Puerto Rican Dance composition contests of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture and nomination for a Latin Grammy, for his musical arrangements for the recording “Songs and Chants-
Puerto Rican Folklore Games.” Due to his musical contribution to the genre of Puerto Rican Dance, the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture dedicated Puerto Rican Dance Week to him.

Meléndez Döhnert graduated with honors from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he completed higher studies in piano with the distinguished Maestro Jesús María Sanromá and composition with the Uruguayan composer Hector Tosar.
He currently works as Professor of the Department of Theory and Composition, where he offers the courses in Solfeggio, Harmony and Analysis and Improvisation, Piano Lab, and a collaborating pianist with the Choir of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, National Choir and Puerto Symphony and Philharmonic Orchestras. Rich.

vmelendez@cmpr.edu

Professor Gloria Navarro

Oboist and Professor, she has been a member of the faculty of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico (CMPR) since 1975, where she teaches Solfeggio courses as a professor in the Department of Theory and Musicology.

During the 1980s she was a teacher at the Juan Morel Campos Institute in Ponce and coordinator of the summer camp of the CMPR Special String Program for Children and the Festival of Youth Symphony Orchestras of the Americas (FOSJA).
As an oboist, he held the English Horn chair in the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra from 1979 until his retirement in 2021. Some of the conductors he has collaborated with are: Pablo Casals, Eugene Kohn; Sergiu Comissiona; Odón Alonso; Víctor Tevah; Maximiano Valdés; Guillermo Figueora, Jr.; Roselín Pabón and Luis Antonio García Navarro, among others.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Humanities and a Bachelor of Music Education degree.
from the University of Puerto Rico, Bachelor of Music in Oboe Performance from the CMPR,
Master's Degree in Music Education from New York University
and a Master of Music degree from the New England Conservatory of Music.

Gloria.Navarro@cmpr.edu

Professor Sheila Ortiz
A native of Ponce Puerto Rico, Professor Ortiz began her musical studies at the Juan Morel Campos Music Institute under the tutelage of cellist Orlando Guillot, Professor Gloria Navarro and Orlando Cora.

In 1984 he began his university studies at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. At this institution he studies with professors Joaquín Vidaechea, Roselín Pabón, Edwin Ramos, Amaury Veray, Pepito Figueroa and Francisco Figueroa among others.

He completed his Master of Music studies on a full scholarship at the University of Miami in Coral Gables where he studied with Eugene Eicher, Lucas Drew and Akira Endo.

As a university professor, she has worked at the Universidad Interamericana Recinto Metropolitano and John Jay College (Puerto Rico Police Academy). Since 2000 she has been a Solfeggio professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and on several occasions she served as coordinator of this area.

As a cellist he has collaborated with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the San Juan Pops Orchestra, Venus Ensemble, Camerata Filarmónica and El Horned Dorset Ensemble; recordings with Mark Anthony, Gilbertito, Millo Torres; shows with Franco de Vita, Lucecita, Christian Castro, Rita Moreno, Pirulo and José Feliciano. He currently plays with the Royal Symphony Orchestra and is a free musician.

During these last years she has taken classes, workshops and seminars with teachers of the stature of Violeta Hensi, María del Pilar Arenas (teacher at the Madrid Conservatory of music theory), Muray Shaefer, Davis Elliot, Gloria Valencia and Iramar Rodríguez among others. She is a certified teacher of the Suzuki Method on cello.

She has been the creator of the Theory and Solfeggio curriculum and books for the School of Fine Arts of Coamo, the Manual for the Preparatory Solfeggio class of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and the Suzuki Reading Book for the Suzuki Association of Puerto Rico.

She is currently a Professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music where she teaches Theory and Music Theory, cello teacher in the Music Program 100 x 35 El Sistema, cello teacher in her private studio, ensemble teacher in the Suzuki Association of Puerto Rico and member of the Board of Directors of the Latin American Forum of Musical Education of Puerto Rico (FLADEMPUR).

sortiz@cmpr.edu

Professor Bartolo Vargas
Professor Bartolo Vargas Cruz is a euphonium player, conductor, and music educator recognized for his artistic and pedagogical work in Puerto Rico and the United States. He earned his Bachelor's degree in Euphonium Performance from Indiana University and two Master's degrees: in Euphonium Performance (University of Cincinnati, CCM) and in Instrumental Conducting (New Mexico State University). As a euphonium player, he has studied with Rubén Ramírez, Harvey Phillips, Keith Brown, Daniel Perantoni, and Timothy Northcut. He has also completed advanced band conducting seminars with Frederick Fennell, Jerry Junkin, Stephen Pratt, and Rodney Winther.

He has performed as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Puerto Rico State Band, the Puerto Rico National Guard Band, the Yauco School of Fine Arts Band, the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music Symphony Band, and the Bogotá Symphony Orchestra. In September 2024, he premiered William Pagán Pérez's Concerto for Euphonium and Symphony Orchestra with the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra under the direction of Roselín Pabón. He served as director of the San Germán Concert Band (2020–2023), where he developed an unparalleled community-based chamber music program.

He is currently a member of the faculty of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music Preparatory School and the University Program, where he teaches theory, solfeggio, aural training, and chamber music. He also directs the Sonus Venti Ensemble and the Porta Coeli Chamber Ensemble, and actively works on developing new repertoire for the Euphonium through collaborations with Puerto Rican and Caribbean composers.

Dr. Jaime Bofill Calero
Dr. Jaime O. Bofill Calero, musician and ethnomusicologist, specializes in researching and performing folk and popular music from the Caribbean and Latin America. Bofill Calero's research focuses on improvisation and the role of music and dance in popular religiosity. His documentaries, articles, and lectures have been presented in various academic forums internationally. His recent article, "Bomba, danza, calypso, y merengue: crear el espacio social en las Fiestas de Santiago Apóstol de Loíza," was awarded the Otto Mayer-Serra Prize in 2012 and will soon be published in the Latin American Music Review.

His doctoral thesis “Improvisation in Jíbaro Music: A Structural Analysis” is an interdisciplinary study that combines musical analysis with ethnographic research and examines the structural schemes and cognitive processes that make up the language of improvisation in Jíbaro music. Graduated from the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras and the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, Bofill Calero continued his graduate studies in the United States where he obtained his Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology and Theory from the University of Arizona in 2013.

jbofill@cmpr.edu

Professor Ángel L. Carrión Maymí
He has a Bachelor's Degree in Music with a specialty in Singing from the CMPR and a Master of Arts with a specialty in History of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean from the Center for Advanced Studies of Puerto Rico and the Caribbean. She has taken piano pedagogy workshops with the world-renowned pedagogue Irina Gorin.
At the CMPR he studied Piano under the tutelage of Cecilia Talavera and Singing under William Woodruff and Zoraida López. He has collaborated on piano, harpsichord and celesta in various CMPR ensembles, including the Symphony Orchestra, the Baroque Ensemble, Álea XXI and several chamber ensembles.
In the professional field, he has collaborated as a pianist with Producciones Aleph under the direction of actress Provi Seín at the National Foundation for Popular Culture (2014-present) and as a keyboardist with the Puerto Rican League of Theater Improvisation (LiPIT, 2016). In 2014 he prepared the chorus for The Opera of Three Cents under the stage direction of Vicente Castro. He was a member of the San Juan Philharmonic Chorale and is currently a member of the Lyric Chorale of Puerto Rico.
As a scholar of the musical history of Puerto Rico, he has published in the academic journals Musiké and Faena Historioográfico. Her master's thesis is part of the anthology titled En pie de Lucha: Nuevas historical investigaciones Puertorriqueñas, edited by Dr. Evelyn Vélez and published by Mariana Editores.
He was Assistant Digital Librarian at the Amaury Veray Library for several years and Institutional Archivist at the CMPR in the 2015-2016 academic year. During the 2016-2017 season, he was Music Librarian of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. Additionally, he served as a theory and solfeggio teacher at the San Juan Children's Choir during the 2023-2024 academic year and as a Piano teacher at the CMPR Preparatory School between 2017-2023.
Since October 2019, he has been the Music Director at Union Church of San Juan and is currently a professor of Music History at CMPR, where he was appointed Associate Dean of Academic and Student Affairs in 2024.

acarrion@cmpr.edu

Dr. Juan Gutiérrez Ruiz
He holds a master's degree in Latin American History from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, and a doctorate in Musicology from the Complutense University of Madrid. He has participated in academic conferences in Puerto Rico, the United States, Spain, France, and England. His main line of research is the cultural history of music, focusing on Latin American music during the 19th and 20th centuries, and on the musical policy of Francoism towards Latin America.

jgutierrez@cmpr.edu

Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry
Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry is a professor at the Conservatory of Music and an instrumentalist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. He began his career as an orchestral conductor in 1995, being invited by the last four principal conductors of the Puerto Rico Symphony (Karl Sollack, Eugene Kohn, Guillermo Figueroa and Maximiano Valdés) to conduct multiple educational, popular and season ticket concerts.

Maestro Irizarry collaborates as director with the most notable artistic entities in his country. Among them, in addition to the Symphony Orchestra, are the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra, the Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, the San Juan Children's Choir and the Ballet Concerto de Puerto Rico company. He has also performed with the national orchestras of Colombia and Costa Rica and on stages in Europe and Latin America. He has been invited to conduct the US Army Field Band of the Federal Capital and the United States Air Force Concert Band, the latter on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC. During that period, he led two performances by the Conservatory Concert Band at Carnegie Hall in New York. From 1993 to 2010, he assisted with Maestro Luis Biava in conducting the Festival of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Americas (FOSJA), held in Puerto Rico. Irizarry has also assisted Maestro Eugene Kohn in the preparation of concerts with tenors Andrea Bocelli and Plácido Domingo, and has assisted Maestro Maximiano Valdés since 2009.

Popular events of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in which it has collaborated with the group Plena Libre (2012) and folklorist William Cepeda (2013) have set a precedent on the island, receiving public acclaim and critical praise. Likewise, his appearances with the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra in concerts licensed by Disney studios (2012) and Pixar studios (2013) established ticket sales records never before seen in events of that nature in Puerto Rico.

During February 2014, Maestro Irizarry was in charge of the summer tour of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica with artists from that country, conducting 6 concerts before more than fifteen thousand spectators. Portions of the concerts were recorded for broadcast on compact disc and DVD that will be released in December of this year. His intervention at the San José Inter-American Festival of the Arts in 2010 culminated with a concert whose attendance was estimated at about 20,000 people.

Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry is a graduate of the San Juan Free School of Music, the PR Conservatory of Music and the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. Additionally, he has participated in improvement programs at the Eastern Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, the Conductors Institute at the University of South Carolina, and the Oregon Bach Festival at the University of Oregon. In 1995 he was a finalist in the Leonard Bernstein Orchestral Conducting Competition within the framework of the Tanglewood Festival, in Massachusetts, concurrently being a scholarship recipient in the orchestral conducting course sponsored by the Organization of American States in front of “El Sistema” orchestras in the Republic of Venezuela.

Maestro Irizarry produces, writes and animates the radio space Banda Sonora on the public radio station of Puerto Rico, WIPR Allegro 91.3 FM.

ririzarry@cmpr.edu

Professor Luis A. Bermúdez

lbermudez@cmpr.edu

Professor Karlo Flores

Professor Karlo Flores is one of the emerging young conductors in the field of orchestral conducting in Puerto Rico. In 2011, under the tutelage of distinguished Maestro Maximiano Valdés, principal conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, and renowned conductor and violinist Eddy Marcano, of the Venezuelan program "El Sistema," Karlo began his career in conducting. Among his performances, he has collaborated with the Ballet Concierto de Puerto Rico company on a staging of P.I. Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. He has served as guest conductor of the Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra and the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra. He is a frequent guest conductor of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, where he has conducted seasonal concerts, educational concert series, and special concert series.

Karlo completed his Master's degree in orchestral conducting at the prestigious Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins University under the tutelage of Gustav Meier, Markand Thakar and Marin Alsop; where he served as graduate assistant of the conducting department and assistant director of the Symphony Orchestra of said institution. In his collaborations at the Peabody Conservatory he worked as assistant director to Leon Fleisher, Marin Alsop, Hajime Teri Murai, Hannu Lintu and Juanjo Mena. Additionally, he assisted renowned conductor Rob Kapilow in his What Makes Music Great? concert series. presented by Washington Performings Arts and Smithsonian Museum of Natural History.

Flores obtained his bachelor's degree in music with a specialty in violin performance at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he studied under the tutelage of renowned violinists José “Pepito” Figueroa and Dara Burkholder. He worked as a violin teacher at the Preparatory School of the Conservatory of Music. For more than fifteen years he served as concertmaster of the Guillermo Figueroa Sanabia Symphony Orchestra, where he frequently participated as soloist and guest conductor. He served as academic coordinator and director of the Puerto Rican Youth Symphony Orchestra of Music 100×35, a program affiliated with the PR Conservatory of Music. Recently, he held the position of director of the Social Musician Programs of the Musical Arts Corporation.

Currently, Flores is a member of the Arturo Somohano Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra and director of the Symphony Orchestra of the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan, where he also serves as violin teacher.

kflores@cmpr.edu

Professor Ismar Colón Carrión

Professor Ismar Colón Carrión is a native of Gurabo, Puerto Rico. He holds a Bachelor of Music degree in Music Education from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He studied guitar with Professor Leonardo Egúrbida and completed additional studies in voice with Professors Zoraida López and William Rivera. He teaches the course "Digital Recording Techniques (MIDI/Audio)" in the Department of Theory and Composition at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and is the technical director of the institution's recording studio. He provides audiovisual technical support for concerts, festivals, master classes, and recitals of various musical genres presented on campus.

He is a member and founder of the musical group “ Así Somos” in which he works as a guitarist, singer, composer, arranger and audio technician. With “ Así Somos ” he has performed at multiple festivals and important national and international stages, in addition to working on his record productions “Injurias” and “Silencio”. He has also participated as a guest singer and guitarist in other recordings, concerts and musical groups.

ismar.colon@cmpr.edu

Professor Josué Casillas Rivera
Professor Josué Casillas, principal flutist of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, also served as principal flutist with the Houston Grand Opera (1996-2001) and the Symphony of Southeast Texas (2001-2004). He can be heard on the CDs Taste of Toccata, Vol. 1 and Obras Puertorriqueñas Contemporáneas, Vol. 1 by Camerata Caribe, an ensemble with which he has participated in the Casals Festival. In Houston, TX, Josué Casillas founded the Keynote Chamber Players and has also participated in the Foundation for Modern Music's contemporary music concert series. A native of Bayamón, Josué Casillas graduated from the Escuela Libre de Música in San Juan. He earned a Bachelor of Music degree (1986) and an Artist Diploma (1987) from the Cleveland Institute of Music. During his studies at CIM, Josué was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts scholarship and a Music Assistance Fund scholarship from the NY Philharmonic Orchestra. These honors led him to attend the Grand Teton and Blossom Music Festivals under the tutelage of Jeffrey Khaner, Principal Flutist of the Philadelphia Orchestra. In 1991, Casillas attended advanced courses at the Écóle de Formation Musicale in Nice, France, where he studied with Maxence Larrieu, professor at the Geneva Conservatory, and Raymond Guiot, professor at the Paris Conservatory. In 1994, Casillas earned an internship with the Houston Symphony Orchestra, completing his Master of Music degree at Rice University in Houston, Texas. Currently, Josué Casillas is a flute professor at the CMPR, after having taught at the Universidad Interamericana, San Germán campus, (1992) and as an Assistant Professor at Baylor University in Waco, Texas (1993).

jcasillas@cmpr.edu

Prof. Mindy Heinsohn
Professor Mindy Heinsohn is an active flutist both in chamber music and as a soloist. Her performances have taken her to the great halls of Europe and the Americas. Heinsohn made her debut at Carnegie Hall in New York under the direction of Maestro Krzysztof Penderecki and has worked with renowned conductors such as Carl St. Clair, Giancarlo Guerrero, Gerard Schwarz, Marin Alsop, Alondra de la Parra, Reinbert de Leeuw, and Peter Oundjian.

She has collaborated with acclaimed international artists such as Ani Kafavian, David Shifrin, Yura Lee, Marcy Rosen, and the Szymanowski Quartet. She has performed at numerous festivals including The Chesapeake Chamber Music Festival, Festival Pablo Casals in Puerto Rico, Norfolk Chamber Music Festival, Kharkiv Music Festival, Narnia Music Festival in Italy, and Moritzburg Festival, among others. A dedicated pedagogue, Heinsohn served as a chair in the flute department at Washington College in Maryland and on the faculty of the International School of Music in Bethesda, Maryland and the Brigitte Steck Musikschule in Germany. She also teaches as part of the Flute Fever Summer Institute and presents an annual master class series at the Escuela Municipal de Música in Guatemala.

Heinsohn is the Founder of LIVE Performing Arts Studio in San Juan and Founder of Puerto Rico Flute Club where she specializes in the high level training of new talents and their preparation for competitions and auditions. In just the last five years, her students have obtained more than $700,000 in scholarships to study abroad. She holds a Master's degree from the prestigious Yale University School of Music and a Bachelor's degree from the Peabody Conservatory where she was a student of the virtuoso Marina Piccinini. She also holds a graduate diploma from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. Among her other principal teachers are Ransom Wilson, Mimi Stillman and Carol Wincenc.

As an orchestral musician, Mindy was Assistant Principal Flute at the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra from 2017-2019. She is currently Principal Flute of the Mid Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and Professor of Flute at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. She is also a multi-instrumentalist and a “Live Act DJ” who recently debuted at Tomorrowland 2024 in Belgium.

mheinsohn@cmpr.edu

Prof. Adam Havrilla
Professor Adam Havrilla joined the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra as principal bassoonist in 2009. That year, he was also appointed professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he discovered his passion for education. There, he teaches chamber music and has cultivated a strong group of students, some of whom have gone on to pursue studies at institutions such as the University of Iowa, SUNY Stony Brook, Illinois State University, the Frost School at the University of Miami, and the Yale School of Music. He is also a member of the Conservatory's resident chamber ensemble, Camerata Caribe, which in 2011 recorded the album Camerata Caribe: Contemporary Puerto Rican Works. In November 2015, Havrilla made his debut as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, performing the Bassoon Concerto in B-flat major, K. 191 by W.A. Mozart. A contemporary music enthusiast, Havrilla joined the Cabrillo Festival Orchestra in Santa Cruz, CA in 2016, playing under the baton of Marin Alsop and currently Director Cristi Macelaru.

A firm believer in the enormous value of education, Havrilla is active in the orchestra's community outreach programs such as the Symphony Experience, which offers lessons and master classes on the principles of orchestral performance to young people who aspire to be musicians.

Adam Havrilla holds a bachelor's degree in fine arts from Carnegie Mellon University and a master's degree in orchestral performance from the Manhattan School of Music where he studied with Nancy Goeres and Frank Morelli, respectively. In January 2015, with the support of the Puerto Rico Conservatory, he had the privilege of inviting his former teacher Frank Morelli to offer a day of master classes to the students.

Before his appointment to the Puerto Rico Symphony, Havrilla worked in the New York area where he is from. He has appeared with orchestras and festivals around the world, such as the Cabrillo Festival, Casals Festival, Siena Festival, AIMS in Graz, American Academy of Conductors in Aspen, National Repertory Orchestra, Long Island Philharmonic and New World Symphony.

adam.havrilla@cmpr.edu

Prof. Kathleen Jones
Coming from a family of musicians from Eugene, Oregon, Kathleen Jones has been principal clarinetist of the PR Symphony Orchestra (OSPR) since 1975. She served as clarinet professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music (CMPR) from 1975 until her retired in 2009, being a member of Camerata Caribe, a chamber group attached to the CMPR, since its founding in 1982. He returned to the CMPR faculty in September 2011. His CD “Caribe Clarinete” received a nomination for a Latin Grammy in 2009 for the composer Alfonso Fuentes, in the category of “Best Classical Work of the Year” for “Voces del Barrio”.

She holds a master's degree from Northwestern University, where she was a student and assistant of Robert Marcellus. His high school degree is from the University of Southern California, and he participates two summers in the Music Academy of the West, studying in both with Mitchell Lurie. He also works with William McColl at the University of Washington in Seattle, with Leon Russianoff in New York, and with Clark Brody in Chicago. He attended Tanglewood in 1982, where he studied chamber music with violinist Rafael Druian.

Critics have praised his work, including Opera News “…the clarinetist in the Forza aria was superb….” and the New York Times, of her 1977 Carnegie Recital Hall debut “…a serious practitioner of musical art on a high level….”

kjones@cmpr.edu

Professor Edgar Abraham Marrero Figueroa
Professor Edgar Abraham is a virtuoso saxophonist, composer, and multi-instrumentalist. He has won three Latin Grammys and produced over 20 albums. His illustrious musicianship and deep musical roots have allowed his work to span the entire spectrum, from symphonic compositions and Caribbean rhythms to avant-garde jazz improvisations.

The prodigious Puerto Rican-born talent began playing the violin at the age of three, guided by his father, Edgard Marrero, a veteran classical musician with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, who has diligently instructed him throughout his life. At the age of nine, Edgar began studying the saxophone. At age 12, he began composing, and at age fourteen, he made his professional debut with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

As a teenager, he performed in a series of recitals entitled “Virtuoso” at the Teatro Tapia (the historic colonial theater in San Juan), the Museo de Arte de Ponce, and the Centro de Bellas Artes de Puerto Rico. At the age of sixteen, Edgar studied under Eugene Rousseau at the Indian Head Arts Center in Wisconsin, USA. Two years later, he graduated Magna Cum Laude from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, completed his Master’s studies in Classical Saxophone, and is currently pursuing his Doctoral studies in Music Education and Performance.

His catalogue of compositions includes more than 500 pieces that reflect his infinite linguistic fluency. In addition to his own compositions, he masters a wide repertoire, ranging from Alexander Glazunov to Claude Debussy, Paul Creston, John Williams, Rimsky Korsakov and Nicolo Paganini, Edouard Lalo, Paul Bonneau, Dubois, Creston, Ibert, Bach and P. Maurice.

Throughout his long career he has been nominated and won the most precious awards in the music industry. In 2005, he received two Emmy nominations for his television special “Edgar Abraham at the Heineken Jazz Fest 2004,” which PBS has shown in over 70 countries. In 2007, he was nominated for a Grammy as a Composer in the Symphonic Choir category. In 2010 he won three (3) Latin Grammy Awards as a producer, for his compositions and arrangements for the iconic urban band Calle13, with whom he has collaborated closely since the band’s beginnings. He worked closely creating the musical arrangements for one of the main themes of the children’s film “Metegol,” a Universal Studios film (Argentina-Spain) directed by Juan José Campanella aimed at the Hispanic world, released in Latin America last summer of 2014.

As a soloist, Edgar has over 20 releases with his original compositions, with some of the most famous jazz musicians in the world, such as Eddie Gomez, Dave Valentin, Richie Flores, Giovanni Hidalgo and Endel Dueño, Horacio “El Negro Hernandez, Alex Acuña, Ignacio Berroa, Pirulo, Miguel Zenon among others.

Edgar's mastery of sixteen instruments has led him to play pianist with Latin jazz heavyweight Jerry Gonzalez, as well as timbales for the Gypsy Kings, drums with Shakira, and saxophone for El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, Stomp, Giovanni Hidalgo, Dave Valentin, Alex Acuña, Nestor Torres, and Jerry Medina, among others.

Edgar has performed in a wide range of numerous live venues including the incomparable Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club in London, Carnegie Hall in New York for his “Unique” concert, the Reichhold Center in Saint Thomas, the Heineken Jazz Festival in Puerto Rico, Havana Jazz Fest, El Zinco Jazz Club Mexico, North Sea Jazz Festival among others.

As a classical saxophonist, Edgar has performed with virtuoso pianist Eugene Kohn, former principal guest conductor of the Bonn Opera and director of the Metropolitan Orchestra in New York. He has also performed with New Mexico Symphony Orchestra conductor Guillermo Figueroa, who conducted Edgar’s Suite for Saxophone and Orchestra entitled “The Ten Worlds.”

One of the most important concerts of his career was his recent performance at Carnegie Hall (November 2014) where he had a full house at the Weill Recital Hall, where he presented 10 original compositions with a mix of classical, folk, flamenco and Caribbean music.

He is currently a Professor of Classical Saxophone at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico since 2017 and is currently working on his most recent productions "La Maquina" with the famous saxophonist Miguel Zenon and "Portal" with the virtuoso percussionist Miroslav Musicant from Poland.

emarrero@cmpr.edu

Professor Jesús Ramos
Professor Jesús Ramos Morales was born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1995. He began his musical studies at age 11 with the "Youth Symphony Orchestra Program" (POSJU), where he began taking oboe lessons with Professor Félix Hernández. Jesús continued his musical studies at the "Ernesto Ramos Antonini Free Specialized School of Music" in San Juan with Professor Leila Martínez. In 2008 and 2011, Jesús won the "Ricardo Morales Sáez Scholarship" soloist competition. In 2011, he traveled as principal oboist with the school's orchestra to the New York International Music Festival, where they received the highest possible award. Jesús has performed twice as a soloist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, in 2008 and 2012, after winning the concerto competition of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra's educational program, "Symphonic Experience."

In 2010 Jesús joined “Los Violines de Marquito”, a group that is characterized by performing popular music with symphonic instruments. In 2012, the group was invited to New York as guest artists to perform in front of 400 guests at the “November Committee Puerto Rican Gala,” an activity with the purpose of recognizing Puerto Rican culture and artists. In the same year, the group also recorded a CD that won an award for "Best Latin American Instrumental Album." In 2014, Jesús toured Mexico with the “Central American and Caribbean Youth Orchestra”.

Jesús has a Bachelor's Degree in Oboe Performance from the Puerto Rico Conservatory where he studied with Dr. Colón (2013), as well as a Master's Degree in Oboe Performance from the California State University in Fullerton with Dr. Rong-Huey Liu (2020).

During the spring of 2021, Jesús participated in a six-month program with the Orchestra of the Americas, called OAcademy, where he worked with world-class artists such as Yo-Yo Ma, Paquito d'Rivera, Albrecht Mayer, among others.

In the summer of that same year he worked as an assistant professor at the Interlochen Center for the Performing Arts along with Dr. Dane Philipsen, Linda Strommen and Bonnie Farr.

Currently, Jesús is a woodwind teacher at Música 100×35 in San Juan, creates and distributes oboe reeds nationwide within his JRMUSIC brand, in addition to composing and arranging music. Jesús holds the position of Oboe/English Horn with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and joins the faculty of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music as Professor of Oboe for the 2022-2023 academic year.

jesus.ramos@cmpr.edu

Prof. Genesio Riboldi
Renowned Puerto Rican conductor and soloist Professor Genesio Riboldi began both careers at an early age. At 17, he was appointed first clarinetist of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and later of the Casals Festival Orchestra, the only Puerto Rican principal in both orchestras.

Maestro Riboldi began conducting in Switzerland under the tutelage of Rudolph Kempe and at the age of 21 he became the first and youngest Puerto Rican conductor with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. As a conductor he has performed with the Angelicum of Milan, Redona Philharmonic, Ars Wien (Vienna), Ensemble di Milano and the Florida Festival Orchestra. He is also the founder of the Camerata Puertorriqueña ensemble. In 1996 he began his association with the Hermitage Museum Orchestra in St. Petersburg, Russia. Since then he has continued his successful performances as guest conductor of this orchestra at the Hermitage Theater, also opening the 1998 Casals Festival with it, being the first Puerto Rican musical director to achieve this distinction in the history of the Festival.

Subsequently, he performed in Saint Petersburg and San Juan in a concert organized by the Catholic University of Ponce, received with enthusiasm by the public and local critics. He also directed in New York the opera by Roberto Sierra with a libretto by Myrna Casas El Messengero de Plata, in a recording for the Newport Classic label. Critics have praised Maestro Riboldi's work in this first recording of a Puerto Rican opera intended for an international audience. He has also collaborated as Musical Director with Teatro de la Opera in the productions of The Magic Flute and The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart and in concert with the tenor Daniel Rodríguez. He is currently Professor of Clarinet and Chamber Music at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.

genesio.riboldi@cmpr.edu

Professor Joshua Pantoja

Horn player of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra since 2004 and French Horn teacher at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music at the University and High School level. He is currently part of the faculty of the Clazz International Music Festival in Arcidosso, Italy, as a horn and improvisation teacher, workshop leader of the brass section of the Puerto Rico Youth Symphony Orchestra, and substitute horn teacher at the Preparatory School of The Juilliard School.
He is an active chamber music performer with Camerata Caribe, Café Corta'o Horn Quartet and Pantojazz. Joshua has stood out for his commitment to bringing the teaching of jazz and improvisation to classically trained musicians, motivating him to publish different books such as "From Classical to Jazz an Improvisation Method", a book that is being used in more than thirty countries,
«Ornamenting your Improvisation a Guide to Approach Notes», “Chord Tone Arpeggios” and «Basics and Colors – Horn Etudes», the latter commissioned by Juilliard's Music Advancement Program.

He has taken Masterclasses at Manhattan School of Music, The Mannes School of Music, The Juilliard Summer Program, Bard College, Montclair University, Delaware University, Shenandoah Conservatory, Texas A&M Corpus Christi, University of Arizona, and was a guest artist at the Southeast Horn Workshop which took place in March 2023 at the University of Central Florida. Other places where he has given Master Classes are the National University of Colombia in Bogotá, University of Caldas in Manizales, Colombia, Eafit University in Medellín, Colombia, and multiple music schools around Puerto Rico. He was a professor at the International Horn Festival and Academy in Manizales, Colombia, 2008 and 2009. During times of pandemic he held Online Masterclasses for the University of Panama, Latin American Horns and Peruvian Horns.
Professor Pantoja began his musical studies at the Escuela Libre de Música in Caguas, Puerto Rico at the age of 12, where he received his first horn lessons with Professor Jorge Figueroa. He obtained his bachelor's degree at The Juilliard School where he studied with Professor Jerome Ashby and his Master's degree at Manhattan School of Music with Professor Javier Gándara. He is currently studying Jazz and Improvisation with Professor Julito Alvarado.
Joshua has performed with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra since 2004 as a member of the horn section, he was a founding member of The Orchestra of the Americas, where he visited countries in Central and South America, Europe and several states in the United States. In 2022 he participated in the Puerto Rico Jazz Jam as part of Humberto Ramírez's Big Band. Other important musical ensembles he has performed with include the National Symphony Orchestra of Colombia, International Chamber Orchestra of Puerto Rico, Camerata Pops, Eafit Symphony Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of the Dominican Republic, American-Russian Young Artist Orchestra (2002 Russia-U.S. Tour .USA), New York Opera Society, Di Capo Opera in New York, Manhattan Virtuosi, Arturo Somoano Philharmonic, Festival Casals, The Juilliard Orchestra, The Juilliard Symphony, Manhattan School of Music Orpheus Institute, Manhattan School of Music Symphony, Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestras, Altenburg Music Festival
(Germany), Idlyllwild Music Festival (California), The Orchestra of the Americas (2002-04 and 2006), Paquito D'Rivera 50th Anniversary All Stars Concert at Carnegie Hall, VII International Festival of Sacred Music and Art at the Vatican, Rome , World Economic Forum 2010 at Carnegie Hall.

He is married to a beautiful Colombian woman, he likes to spend his summers in Colombia.
Love coffee, birds and going to the beach!

jpantoja@cmpr.edu

Dr. Nitai Pons Perez
Dr. Nitai Pons Pérez began his musical studies in the Yauco School Band. He holds a Doctorate of Music degree with a concentration in trumpet from the University of Kansas and a Bachelor of Music Education degree from the CMPR. His primary teachers are Steve Leisring, Ronald Romm, Roberto Ramírez, Luis Fred, Vincent Penzarella, Manny Laureano, and Richard Giangiulio.
Nitai has received several awards at national and regional competitions including the 2001 Roberto I. Ferdman Award; Semi-Finalist Soloist at the 2006 National Trumpet Competition in the United States; Fifth Place in the Trumpet Ensemble category at the 2006 National Trumpet Competition; First Place in the Brass Quintet category at the 2005 Kansas State Music Education Association Competition.
Nitai Pons has had extensive participation in groups such as: The Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, Kansas City Symphony Orchestra, Puerto Rico State Band, Casals Festival Brass, Borinquen Brass Ensemble, Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra, Lawrence Chamber Orchestra in Kansas, Fountain City Brass Band, The Kansas Brass Quintet among others.
As an educator and lecturer, Nitai has been invited to present at the International Trumpet Guild Annual Conference, at the CMPR Music Education Forum, to conduct the Ohio University Symphonic Band, and has given master classes at the Conservatorio Superior de Asturias, the Conservatorio Superior de Jaén, the University of Kansas, Ohio University, and other institutions in Puerto Rico. In addition, he was a Trumpet professor at Pittsburg State University, at the Universidad Interamericana in San Germán, and Band Director at the University of Puerto Rico in Ponce. Currently, he is a professor of Brass Instruments and Band Director at the Ernesto Ramos Antonini Specialized School of Fine Arts in Yauco. Nitai Pons is an endorsed artist for Bach instruments and artistic director of the Puerto Rico Band Conducting Seminar.

npons@cmpr.edu

Professor Miguel A. Rivera Trinidad
Trombone Teacher

Miguel Rivera began his musical studies at an early age at the Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico, with the Granada professor Antonio Salcedo. He then continued his musical training at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music under the tutelage of Keith Brown. In addition to Professor Brown, he studied with Professors M. Dee Stewart, Lewis Van Haney, and Edwin Anderson. At the Indiana School of Music he obtained his Bachelor's Degree in Music and a concentration in Performance, being awarded the Performer's Certificate by unanimous decision (the highest award granted by the institution to an instrumentalist). Later, Janos Starker admitted him to the Artist Diploma Program. Rivera continued private studies in New York with Joseph Alessi, Principal Trombonist of the New York Philharmonic and attended his Master Classes and Seminars in Nyack, NY and Albuquerque, New Mexico. He also attended Seminars and Master Classes with Christian Lindberg and Michel Bequet.

At the age of 22 he was named Co-Principal Trombonist of the New World Symphony of Miami and later was named Principal Trombonist of the Barcelona and National Symphony Orchestra of Catalonia (OBC), becoming the first Puerto Rican brass instrumentalist to be appointed to a position of such magnitude in an International European Symphony Orchestra. As a soloist, he premiered in Spain Paul Creston's Fantasia for Trombone and Orchestra, as well as Frank Martin's Concerto for Wind Instruments live for Radio and National Television of Spain, receiving very good reviews from specialized critics. He toured Spain, Germany, Holland, Czechoslovakia, France, Japan and South Korea, among other countries. In Barcelona, Rivera was also named Principal Trombonist of the Teatre Lliure Orchestra by Josep Pons, its musical director and founder. In addition, he also performed as a guest of the Opera Orchestra of the Gran Teatro del Liceo. Other orchestras with which he has collaborated include the San Diego Symphony Orchestra, the Naples, Florida Philharmonic, the Indianapolis Chamber Orchestra, the Evansville Symphony and the National Orchestra of Costa Rica. He has also had the joy of collaborating under the direction of Stanislaw Skrovaczewski, Rafael Fruhbeck de Burgos, Yehudi Menuhin, Sergiu Comissiona, Luis Antonio García Navarro, Valerie Giergiev and JoAnn Falletta, among many others. Other countries in which he has performed include the United States, Canada, Portugal, Venezuela, Curaçao, Dominican Republic, Virgin Islands, Costa Rica, Colombia and Italy.

Rivera, during his stay as Co-Principal Trombonist of The New World Symphony of Miami under the baton of the famous conductor Michael Tilson Thomas, toured at the Pacific Music Festival in California and collaborated on recording reproductions with the famous companies Argos, RCA and BMG . In Miami, too, he performed under the direction of luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein, Cristopher Eschenbach and Eduardo Mata, among others.

Recently, Rivera was selected to perform as Principal Trombonist with the Kennedy Center Honor Awards Orchestra made up of New World Symphony alumni. At that concert, Michael Tilson Thomas was awarded the honorary award and the concert was broadcast live on United States National Television.
Miguel Rivera belonged to the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and during his stay he won the Instrumental Competition twice, performing accompanied by the orchestra the Concertino for trombone and orchestra by Ferdinand David and La Fantasía by Paul Creston. His work in recording studios has been intense, collaborating on hundreds of recordings with great artists such as Placido Domingo, José Carreras, Montserrat Caballé, Marc Anthony, Willie Colón, Luis Perico Ortiz, Ricky Martin, Jerry Rivera, Oscar de León, JLO , Gilberto Santarrosa, Daddy Yankee, Lucecita, Cheyenne, Peret, Moncho, Tony Vega, Frankie Ruiz, Humberto Ramirez, Ismael Miranda and Gloria Estefan among others. Due to his collaborations on these recordings, he has received five Grammy Awards and ten nominations.

Miguel Rivera is an artist and speaker for the famous SE Shires brand and maintains a busy schedule performing recitals and master classes around the world. Among the international events in which he has participated are Ci Tbon in Beetera, Valencia, Spain in the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, Trombonanza 2023 in Santa Fe, Argentina.

miguel.riverat@cmpr.edu

Prof. Ramón L. Serra Sostre
Professor Ramón Luis Serra began his trombone studies at the Escuela Libre de Música in San Juan under the tutelage of Antonio Salcedo. He earned a bachelor's degree from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.
From 1997 to 2001 he served as second trombone player of the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra. He has been a trombone teacher at the Escuela Libre de Música from 1999 to the present. He has been a trombone teacher at the Conservatory of Music since 2014.
He is currently a bass trombonist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra since 2001.

ramon.serra@cmpr.edu

Prof. Nelson M. Corchado

Prof. Jose Alicea Espada

Professor José Alicea Espada has had a distinguished and varied career in and outside Puerto Rico. He graduated from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, Indiana University, and New York University. In the 1970s, he served as principal percussionist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and performed as a soloist with Ravi Shankar. For eight consecutive years, he was part of a select group of Puerto Rican musicians who belonged to the Original Orchestra of the Casals Festival. He has also been a member of the show orchestras of Miguelito Miranda and Mario Ortiz, among others, in major hotel chains in Puerto Rico, and for several years was a bongo player in the orchestras of Maestros German Peña and Mocho Ursera. He also collaborated with Maestro Cachete Maldonado on the "Symphony of Drums" project, presented to prominent percussionists of the Latin Percussion Company. In Venezuela, he played with maestro Aldemaro Romero and was a member of the Caracas Philharmonic Orchestra and a percussion professor for several groups of the State Foundation for the National System of Youth and Children's Orchestras of Venezuela (FESNOJIV).

He has extensive experience as a soloist and conductor, having performed on such important stages as Illinois State University, Indiana University, and the Youth Orchestra Festival of the Americas. He has premiered a large number of works for solo percussion, mixed ensemble, ballet and film music. His interest in promoting music for percussion ensembles has led him to conduct percussion groups in Bogotá, Venezuela, Santo Domingo, Spain and Puerto Rico. From 1995 to the present he has presented the International Percussion Festival at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. He has recorded the CD Corner Stone, Trailer Music for films. He has presented seminars at the “International Percussion Days” in Ribarroja del Túria, Spain. Since 1982 he has been a percussion professor at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico where he offers courses on advanced percussion instruments at the bachelor’s and graduate levels at the Simón Bolívar University and the Simón Bolívar Orchestras – Simón Bolívar Musical Foundation.

jalicea@cmpr.edu

Professor Pedro Juan Jiménez
Puerto Rican pianist graduated from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York. He has been a teacher and accompanying pianist for various musical and educational institutions, such as the Choir of the University of Puerto Rico, Coralia, the San Juan Philharmonic Choir, the Lyric Choir of Puerto Rico, and the San Juan Children's Choir, to which He has accompanied them on tours throughout Europe, the United States and Latin America. She has also been a faculty member at international singing programs such as the International Vocal Arts Institute and the Institute of Vocal Arts.

He has worked under the direction of renowned teachers such as: Eugene Kohn, Enrique Patrón de Rueda, Paul Nadler, Lawrence Gilgore, Giancarlo Guerrero, Steven Mercurio, Ramón Tebar, Kamal Khan, Enrique Irizarry, Corrado Rovaris, Josep Caballé Domenech, Keri-Lynn Wilson , Roselín Pabón and Maximiano Valdés. He has collaborated with international and Puerto Rican singers such as: Lawrence Brownlee, Michael Spyers, Fabio Armiliato, Denisse Graves, Verónica Villarroel, Nancy Fabiola Herrera, Jossie Pérez, Joseph Calleja, Diana Soviero, Sherril Milnes, Alfredo Kraus, Plácido Domingo, Joel Prieto, Rafael Dávila, César Hernández, Pablo Elvira, Antonio Barasorda, Justino Díaz, Michael Chioldi, Sondra Radvanovsky, Kate Aldrich, Piotr Beczala, Roberto Alagna and Aleksandra Kurzak.

He has been in charge of directing the musicals Chicago, Footloose, Chorus Line, Oliver, Hair and Mamma Mia; as well as the zarzuelas El Duo de La Africana, El Barbero de Aguadilla (adaptation of the zarzuela El Barbero de Sevilla), Los Claveles and La Corte de Faraón. His recording credits include the productions San Juan Children's Choir in Bremen and Roberto Sierra's Symphony No. 3 La Salsa, together with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

He serves as an associate professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he is a member of the musical group Camerata Caribe, a chamber group in residence composed of professors from said institution. He is a master repeater for the companies: Opera de Puerto Rico, Teatro de la Opera, Fundación Puertorriqueña de Zarzuela y Opereta, Compañía Lírica de Puerto Rico and Culturarte. In addition, he performs as a pianist with the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra, the Camerata Pops Orchestra of Puerto Rico and the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

Pedro.Jimenez@cmpr.edu

Professor Jorge Eduardo Ramos Asillo
Born in Arequipa, Peru, he began his theoretical studies at an early age under the supervision of his father. Later, at the age of 14, he realized his passion for the piano and began to study theoretically in a self-taught manner.

Two years later, he took piano courses at the Luis Dunker Lavalle School of Music in his city, and then entered the School of Arts at the National University of San Agustín in Arequipa, specializing in piano under the guidance of the prestigious teacher Tomas Vizcarra Carbajal.
During this time he collaborated with different cultural institutions and local artists making chamber music and giving some recitals as a soloist.

In 2001 he met maestro Nicolás Reynoso Vizcarra, descendant of a family of famous and important musicians from the city, who did not doubt his talent and encouraged him to study in Puerto Rico.
Maestro Reynoso was one of the people who would strongly influence his way of seeing art (musical maturity), being a patron who, through study sessions, helped him discover the seriousness and discipline that the study of music involves.

In August 2003 she traveled to Puerto Rico to pursue advanced piano studies under the direction of teachers Cecilia Talavera, Marisa García and Félix Rivera Guzmán at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music.
During his activities as an international student he meets noble-hearted people who did not hesitate to support him, thanks to his sense of commitment he is highly recommended within the artistic environment on the island.
It is necessary to mention the renowned and remembered Choral Director Luis Oliveri, who was like a musical father who helped him greatly in his musical training.

As part of his musical activity on the island, he served as a collaborating pianist and rehearsal pianist in several institutions such as the Choir of the University of Puerto Rico Arecibo Campus, the Community Choir of the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, Duke's University, Scholla Cantorum of Puerto Rico, Orfeón San Juan Bautista, Choir of the University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus, Camerata Pops Orchestra, among others.

Together with the Orfeón San Juan Bautista Choir, he has collaborated in the recordings of choral works by the illustrious composer Jack D'lano as well as in the recordings of choral music by the renowned composer Ernesto Cordero.

In 2009 she obtained her bachelor's degree in the specialty of Piano Performance, later in 2010 she obtained her Diploma in Piano Performance, in 2016 a Master's Degree in Piano Performance and in 2023 a Master's Degree in Musical Education, all from the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, her alma mater.

In 2010, through a competition, he was selected as part of the faculty at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. Since then, Mr. Ramos accompanies and collaborates every academic semester with excellent young musician students, faculty, local and international guest artists in activities such as recitals, student concerts, faculty concerts, seminars and masterclasses at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico. These experiences are part of his musical life which he respects and enjoys at all times.

Jorge.Ramos@cmpr.edu

Professor Ernesto Busigó

ernesto.busigo@cmpr.edu

Professor Pablo Boissen Mediavilla

pablo.boissen@cmpr.edu

Professor Tatiana Vélez

tvelez@cmpr.edu

Professor Rafael Rodríguez Abad

Professor Rafael I. Rodríguez Abad, originally from San Juan, Puerto Rico, is a talented musician whose career has been marked by his dedication and passion for the piano. From an early age, Rafael showed a profound interest in music, which led him to begin formal training at a very young age.

After graduating from the Preparatory School of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, he continued his academic career in the field of music, completing a Bachelor of Music in Piano Performance in 2022. This academic achievement consolidated his position as a disciplined pianist committed to his art.

Currently, Rafael combines his artistic career with teaching, giving classes at the Preparatory School of the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico, where he also works as an Accompanying Pianist. At the university level, he is an Accompanying Pianist at the Conservatory, sharing his knowledge and love of music with new generations. His commitment to musical education and the training of young talents has been key in his career, contributing to the cultural and artistic development of Puerto Rico.

rafaelrodriguezpiano@gmail.com

Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry, director

Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry is a professor at the Conservatory of Music and an instrumentalist with the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. He began his career as an orchestral conductor in 1995, being invited by the last four principal conductors of the Puerto Rico Symphony (Karl Sollack, Eugene Kohn, Guillermo Figueroa and Maximiano Valdés) to conduct multiple educational, popular and season ticket concerts.

Maestro Irizarry collaborates as director with the most notable artistic entities in his country. Among them, in addition to the Symphony Orchestra, are the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra, the Casals Festival of Puerto Rico, the San Juan Children's Choir and the Ballet Concerto de Puerto Rico company. He has also performed with the national orchestras of Colombia and Costa Rica and on stages in Europe and Latin America. He has been invited to conduct the US Army Field Band of the Federal Capital and the United States Air Force Concert Band, the latter on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, DC. During that period, he led two performances by the Conservatory Concert Band at Carnegie Hall in New York. From 1993 to 2010, he assisted with Maestro Luis Biava in conducting the Festival of the Youth Symphony Orchestra of the Americas (FOSJA), held in Puerto Rico. Irizarry has also assisted Maestro Eugene Kohn in the preparation of concerts with tenors Andrea Bocelli and Plácido Domingo, and has assisted Maestro Maximiano Valdés since 2009.

Popular events of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra in which it has collaborated with the group Plena Libre (2012) and folklorist William Cepeda (2013) have set a precedent on the island, receiving public acclaim and critical praise. Likewise, his appearances with the Arturo Somohano Philharmonic Orchestra in concerts licensed by Disney studios (2012) and Pixar studios (2013) established ticket sales records never before seen in events of that nature in Puerto Rico.

During February 2014, Maestro Irizarry was in charge of the summer tour of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica with artists from that country, conducting 6 concerts before more than fifteen thousand spectators. Portions of the concerts were recorded for broadcast on compact disc and DVD that will be released in December of this year. His intervention at the San José Inter-American Festival of the Arts in 2010 culminated with a concert whose attendance was estimated at about 20,000 people.

Maestro Rafael Enrique Irizarry is a graduate of the San Juan Free School of Music, the PR Conservatory of Music and the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington. Additionally, he has participated in improvement programs at the Eastern Music Festival, the Music Academy of the West, the Conductors Institute at the University of South Carolina, and the Oregon Bach Festival at the University of Oregon. In 1995 he was a finalist in the Leonard Bernstein Orchestral Conducting Competition within the framework of the Tanglewood Festival, in Massachusetts, concurrently being a scholarship recipient in the orchestral conducting course sponsored by the Organization of American States in front of “El Sistema” orchestras in the Republic of Venezuela.

Maestro Irizarry produces, writes and animates the radio space Banda Sonora on the public radio station of Puerto Rico, WIPR Allegro 91.3 FM.

ririzarry@cmpr.edu

Prof. Elías Santos Celpa, director
Prof. Elías Santos Celpa, EdD (abd)

Born in Chicago, Illinois and moved to Puerto Rico at the age of five, he grew up in a music-oriented family where his mother played guitar and sang, as well as other family members. He began his formal studies in music at the age of sixteen, at the Carolina School of Fine Arts and simultaneously at the Ramos Antonini Free School of Music in San Juan.

Santos-Celpa has doctoral studies in Educational Management and Leadership from the Inter-American University of PR. He completed a Master of Arts in the concentration of Jazz Performance, from the Aaron Copland Conservatory, at the University of Queens College in NY. In this, he was under the tutelage of renowned international musicians such as: Ted Rosenthal, Buster Williams, Antonio Hart, Michael Phillip Mossman and legendary bassist Ron Carter. After completing his studies, in December 2005 he was recognized at Lincoln Center by the ASCAP Foundation with the Louis Armstrong Award as a jazz composer. He has a Certificate in Biblical and Theological Studies from the Theological University of the Caribbean. He graduated from the Conservatory with a bachelor's degree in Musical Education with a specialty in double bass.

As a performing musician and arranger, he has developed in different styles, participating with artists and groups of the caliber of: Puerto Rico Philharmonic Orchestra, Youth Orchestra of the Americas (FOSJA), Queens College Symphony, Carlos Barbosa Lima, Sofi, Lucy Fabery, Nydia Caro, Las Caribels, Cano Estremera, Tony Vega, Huey Dumbar, Rey Ruiz, DLG, Charlie Cruz, David & Abraham, Son by Four, Orbie Bermúdez, Bayanga (later Calle 13), León de Judá, José Ferrer, Edwin Cotto , Lilly Goodman, Damaris Grillo, Yamil Ledesma, Luis Córdoba, Ezequiel Colón, Rene González, Samuel Hernández, Los Tres Pianistas, Jorge Vizcarrondo, Proyecto Evif, Berkley at PR Big Band, Carli Muñoz trio, William Cepeda, Elliot Feijó, Humberto Ramírez , David Sánchez, Furito Ríos, Paoli Mejías, Michael Mossman, Tammy Shoji, Bobby Sanabria, Hector Mangtiñon, Antonio Hart, Conrad Herwig, Néstor Torres, Giovanny Hidalgo, Allyson Briggs and Mark Levine among others.

As a producer, in 2015 he released the album Antología, his first album, which was initially born as an educational project. Later, “Aguinaldo Jíbaro” (2019) comes out with his Borinqueneer Jazz Trio. Also, in 2012, he published his “New Children's Songbook of Puerto Rican Culture”; an educational resource for early and elementary teachers.

Active in this area, he has continued to produce for other discography, which include: “Ha Nacido” & “Jesús” (2009) Rene González, “A Cantar ya Learn” (2012) Despertar Musical, “En Intimidad” (2016) ) Shirley & Ashley, “40” (2019) & “My Kind of Christmas” (2020) Fidel Osorio, “Ser” (2020) Gonchi Sifre and recently “Resplandece” (2022) Paola Rivera.

In the field of education, he has worked in different spheres and levels such as: elementary level teacher at DE, teacher at the Carolina School of Fine Arts and theory professor at the University of PR. He has also worked as a curriculum specialist in the central level of the Department of Education, participating in the development of the projects: Establishing Connections Through the Fine Arts (2006), and the Content Standards and Expectations of the Degree in Fine Arts (2007). He has been a curriculum integration and planning trainer for teachers in the public system, in the Aesthetic Education congresses of PR (2007 & 2008) and in the School District of the Arts project (2012). He has carried out educational projects for the Banco Popular Foundation, such as “Revive the Music; The Concert” from 2010 to 2019; arranging, coordinating and directing an orchestra of over 90 young people where he has shared with: Millo Torres, NG2, Yaire, La Secta, Siete, Black Guayaba, Cultura Profética and Tommy Torres. Also for the Foundation, he developed the curriculum for the “Musical Acceleration” Project in 2018. In this area, he has served as a curricular developer for entities such as the Theological University of the Caribbean (baccalaureate in Sacred Music-2019) and Covenant Private School (elementary to higher -2021).

He serves as Associate Professor of the PR Conservatory of Music, although he has held administrative positions such as Associate Dean of Academic Affairs (2012 & 2015), Academic Advisor (2009-present) and Department Director. In addition, in 2014 he was in charge of the musical direction of the Música 100 x 35 program, where he was entrusted with the “Misión Salsa” project; only concert performed by El Gran Combo de PR together with a symphony orchestra.

In the Jazz and Caribbean Music high school, he teaches the specialty courses; History of Jazz, Thematic Combos, Seminar on Improvisation and Jazz Solfeggio. He also serves as one of the four directors of the institution's Conjunto Mayores, directing the Concert Jazz Band since 2008. This group has performed at Galas at the Ponce Museum, to town festivals in the Fortress. In its concert billboards it has had the participation of renowned artists such as: Quique Talavera, Luis Perico Ortiz, Luis Bonilla, Pete Rodríguez, Edsel Gómez, Ignacio Berroa, Vic Juris, Alexis Cole, Ray Vega, Bruce Bart, Aric Schneller, Jerry Bergonzzi, Joey Tartell, Carlos Henríquez and Miguel Zenón among others.

esantos@cmpr.edu

Prof. William Rivera Ortiz, director
Professor William Rivera Ortiz is a professor at the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, where he serves as director of the Master's Program in Choral Studies and heads the Voice Department. He has taught graduate courses in choral literature, seminars, and choral conducting, and at the bachelor's level in basic and choral conducting, choral education for teachers, music theory, vocal technique, and composition seminars, among others. He directs the Conservatory Choir and the Concert Choir, with which he has participated in choral festivals in Puerto Rico, the United States, and Italy.

Its choirs have participated in the seasons of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, the Casals Festival, the Opera Workshop of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music, Puerto Rico Opera, the Puerto Rican Zarzuela and Operetta Foundation, the Inter-American Festival of the Arts , the “Arturo Somohano” Philharmonic Orchestra of Puerto Rico, Culturarte of Puerto Rico and the Bayamón Symphony Orchestra.

During the years 1992 to 1995, he was director of the Puerto Rican Girls' School Choir and the Disciples of Christ Academy Choir (secondary level) Bayamón, with which he won first prize at the 1995 Musicfest held in Orlando, Florida, USA. In 1999, he founded the Ars Vocalis Choir with which he has performed at various choral festivals in Austria, Italy, the United States, the Czech Republic, Northern Ireland and Puerto Rico. In addition to his concerts and special activities, he carried out his national tour “Al son de mi voz” sponsored by the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. In March 2008, Ars Vocalis won first prize in the mixed choir category at the 19th edition of the Concorso Internazionale di Canto Corale held in Verona, Italy. In 2003, he was director of the Choir of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus and taught the choral conducting course for five years at said institution. Since 2004, he has directed the National Choir of Puerto Rico with which he has presented community concerts, Christmas concerts, in the Family Concert Series of the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and in the Christmas Concerts of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra. In 2005, he participated in the International Choir Festival in Vienna, Austria and in 2012, a concert tour in Montreal and Quebec, Canada.

He graduated Magna cum Laude from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music. He studied under the tutelage of Masters Roselín Pabón, Ángel Mattos and Carmen Acevedo. In 1987, he obtained a Master of Music with a specialty in Choral Conducting from Temple University, where he studied with the distinguished choir director Alan Harler. In 1995, the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida awarded him a scholarship to study for a Doctorate in Musical Arts with a specialty in choral direction and literature, and vocal pedagogy. There he studied with professors Jo-Michael Scheibe and Donald Oglesby. In 1996, he represented the University by directing the choral repertoire sessions at the American Choral Directors Association Regional Convention in Norfolk, Virginia. She was in charge of the Chamber Choir, the Women's Choir, taught the Choral Conducting course at the high school level, prepared the choirs for the Opera Workshop and coordinated the Holiday Dinners of the Choral Program. He was Assistant Director of the University Concert Choir and the Collegium Musicum of the Miami Bach Society.

Professor Rivera participated as a guest in workshops, seminars, forums and conventions in and outside Puerto Rico. In 2012, he was invited to join the jury for the International Choral Singing Competition in Verona, Italy. By 1991, he was President of the Association of Choirs of Puerto Rico. He has served as a jury in several choral competitions in our country. Since 1989, he has been Director of the Choir of the Third Christian Church “Disciples of Christ” in Sierra Linda, Bayamón, Puerto Rico. Additionally, he is a member of the International Federation of Choral Music, the Puerto Rico Choral Association, the American Choral Directors Association and Chorus America. His biography has been published in “Who's who in Choral Music”.

William.Rivera@cmpr.edu

Maestro Roselín Pabón, director

Emeritus Conductor, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra and Musical Director of the Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra.
As a Guest Conductor he has performed in the United States, Spain, Italy, Central and South America and the Caribbean.
Last December he presented a television special of the play El Niño de Aguadilla celebrating the centenary of its composer Amaury Veray.
In August 2024, he conducted the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra in a concert of Puerto Rican music presented at Millennium Park in that city.
In July 2021, he recorded a concert of Puerto Rican music with the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra for its virtual concert series.
From 2010-2019 he served as Principal Guest Conductor of the Chamber Music Inc. organization in New York.
Among the honors he has received are an honorary doctorate in Arts from the Interamerican University, the Mangó de Oro from his hometown, Mayagüez, the Coquí de Oro, and the UNESCO Medal for his contribution to the dissemination of symphonic music in Puerto Rico. He is a member of the Puerto Rican Musicians Hall of Fame and is distinguished for being the first assistant director of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra.

Maestro Pabón has recorded several albums of Puerto Rican music, a video with the famous guitarist Ángel Romero and recently the Opereta Cofresí, by the illustrious Puerto Rican composer Rafael Hernández, which was nominated for a Grammy Award.

Some of his artistic commitments in 2024 include his performance as a guest conductor at the Unibac festival in Cartagena, Colombia. He recently conducted G. Donizetti's opera Elixir del Amor for Opera de Puerto Rico.
In April 2023, he conducted the premiere and recorded the work by Puerto Rican composer Hermelindo Ruiz Mestre dedicated to the fresco of San Telmo in the San José Church in Old San Juan.

Currently, in addition to being Musical Director of the Conservatory of Music Symphony Orchestra, Pabón serves as Director of the institution's new Master's program in Orchestral Conducting.

He graduated from the Free School of Music of Mayagüez (1963), the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland (1968) and the University of Indiana in Bloomington (1977).

In 2023, Maestro Pabón celebrated his fiftieth anniversary as Musical Director, having made his debut in 1973 directing the English operetta “The Mikado” by Gilbert and Sullivan at the old Silvia Rexach theatre in Puerta de Tierra.
He also celebrated his sixty-five years in music, 1958-2023.

rpabon@cmpr.edu