Miguel del Aguila, Director          

Ventura County's premier chamber choral ensemble.

  •   Miguel del Aquila

    • A COMPOSER "OF GROWING INTERNATIONAL reputation who has stirred passionate interest among the classical music media world" (Americas Magazine, Washington DC), Miguel del Aguila has been hailed by critics as "a spontaneous creator" (El Pais Montevideo), "armed with a distinct compositional voice" (Los Angeles Times) and "a fine sense of direction and drama" (American Record Guide). Reviewers have found his music "unusual...superb" (Fanfare), "of obsessive vitality" (Wiener Zeitung), "wonderfully expressive" (American Record Guide), "remarkable, strikingly rhythmic" (Der Landbote, Switzerland) and "thrilling and ghastly" (Kliene Zeitung, Austria).

    Born in Uruguay in 1957 del Aguila moved to the U.S. with his family in 1978 and received a BA from San Francisco Conservatory. He then traveled to Vienna for further musical studies. After ten years there as composer, pianist, and teacher, he returned in 1992 to live in Southern California. His catalogue of over 40 compositions includes a full-length opera, nine works for orchestra, solo and chamber works, music for theater and television, and choral works. Aguila's orchestral works have been performed by the Brooklyn Philharmonic, Odessa Philharmonic, the Welsh BBC Symphony, the Cosmopolitan Symphony of New York, the American Music Ensemble-Vienna, the Ventura County Symphony, and the Mendocino Festival Orchestra. The long list of performers of Aguila's chamber music includes members of the Amsterdam and Vienna Philharmonic Orchestras, the Austrian Radio Orchestra, and the Vienna Symphony Orchestra.

    Premieres of his works in international music festivals and concert series have been broadcast by ORD-Austria, BBC, RAI, Ukrainian TV, and Slovenian Radio, and in the U.S. by WQXR New York and KUSC Los Angeles. Seven of his orchestral and chamber works have been recorded by Albany Records and ACA Records in the U.S. and by Sony-Austria and KKM-Vienna in Europe.

    The numerous awards and honors received by Miguel del Aguila for his work as a composer and pianist include Meet the Composer Awards (Los Angeles, 1993 and 1994); First Prize in the United Students of the Americas Competition (New York, 1988); First Prize, Olympiad of the Arts (California, 1984), and first prizes in the AEMUS and Jeunesses Musicales Competitions (Montevideo, 1977 and 1978).

    An active pianist, Aguila has appeared with several orchestras. His solo and chamber recitals have been given at Carnegie Hall's Weill Recital Hall and Merkin Hall in New York, and the Konzerthaus and Bosendorfer Halls in Vienna.

    While he has great respect for the classical tradition, Aguila believes he must create the freshest, most spontaneous music he can. What results is a captivating interplay of classical balance and romantic excess. Aguila's penchant for devising pro-grams for his works (which are usually not disclosed) further enhances his highly dramatic style in which musical ideas, always simple and recognizable, are pushed to extremes by propulsive rhythms and adventurous instrumentation.

    Rhythm is the most important element in Aguila's music. He sometimes uses rhythmic craves, a Latin American conception of rhythmic tonality to which harmony and melody must conform. This is the case with Conga-Line in Hell (1993). Written to be performed with Villa-Lobos's Bachianas Brasileiras: No. 5 for 8 cellos, Conga-Line in Hell is for flute, 2 clarinets, piano, percussion and 8 cellos. Aguila writes "In this work I present Dante's inferno from a different point of view humor- sarcastic, rhythmic, but also terrifying. I rely on the dramatic and expressive qualities of rhythm to convey the evil forces that govern my imaginary hell."

    Aguila also wrote a piano version of the piece, called Conga. Since then, two more versions have come along one for a more standard large chamber ensemble, commissioned by the New Juillard Ensemble, and an orchestral version commissioned by the Ventura County Symphony. Both received their premieres in the fall of 1994; both to great acclaim. Aguila's most popular work is Toccata for chamber orchestra, a brilliant concert-closer that features a percussion battery of 6 players. A metric alternation of 6/8 and 7/8 animates the: -. work. Brazilian dance rhythms figure in Hexen for bassoon and string orchestra, Aguila's musical portrayal of a bewitchment. A compelling, progressively animated conversation takes . place between the soloist and strings. The virtuosic bassoon part contains glissandi, extremes of register, explosive leaps, long chromatic runs, and some new techniques. Slightly more sober -- though still highly dramatic - is Aguila's Clarinet Concerto whose opening movement contains some of his most beautiful music. The second movement begins with the blast of a police whistle and an arresting tutti chord, and proceeds in a jazz- fashion, finally yielding to an impassioned recollection of the first movement.

    Aguila's dramatic sense is given free rein in his opera Cuauhtemoc which makes use of double SATB chorus, a vast array of percussion, banjo, saxophone quartet, and the South American conch-like caracol to tell the story of the confrontation between the Spanish conquistador Cortes and the last Aztec emperor, Cuauhtemoc Cuauhtemoc Songs, choral excerpts from the opera, will be premiered in late 1994 by the Ojai Camerata. Also extracted from Cuauhtemoc is the orchestra work Caribbean Bacchanal, a 15-minute rhythmic tour de force that will be of interest to pops orchestras. In addition to his great gift for orchestral textures, Aguila excels in writing small ensemble works. The piano parts in his works for solo instrument and piano are demanding, taking on the role of the orchestra. In his works for piano solo, he explores American idioms like blues and jazz, and skews rhythmic patterns of South American origin into asymmetrical meters. An exception to his usual outgoing style is the intimate Herbsttag (Autumn Day) for flute, bassoon and harp, an impressionistic re-creation of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem of the same name. In place of what one critic has called the "turbulent fantasy" we are used to hearing in his works, we are given an evocation of the ripeness of late summer yielding to autumn. But even in this contemplative work, Aguila conjures up striking new textures for the ensemble.
    Miguel del Aguila and his music.