About Us
Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival, July 1-19, 2024
Carlos Amat, Artistic Director
Born in Spain, conductor, pianist
He holds a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Baltimore, and he worked as repetiteur at the Palau de
He has conducted the Academic Orchestra of St. Petersburg, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Cuba, Orquesta de Valencia, Orquesta de Cámara de Minería (México DF), Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Perú, Orquesta Filarmónica de Honduras, Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Guatemala, “Joaquín Rodrigo” Chamber Orchestra, New Music Ensemble of Miami, and Orquesta Sinfónica de Castellón. He has collaborated with soloists like violonist Vicente Huerta, cellist Adrian Van Dongen, pianists Leonel Morales, Brenno Ambrossini, Soyeon Lee, Jenny Lin and Ran Dank, trumpetists Otto Sauter and Vicente Campos, as well as oboist Vicente Llimerá. He has also conducted singers like Mayte Alberola, Silvia Vázquez, Ilona Mataradze, Beatriz Lanza, Javier Agulló, Moisés Marín, Manuel de Diego, Miguel Borrallo, Manel Esteve, Pedro Quiralte, Javier Franco, among many others.
Carlos Amat has conducted titles like Pagliacci, La Traviata, L’Elisir d’Amore, Rigoletto, Don Giovanni, La Rondine, Doña Francisquita, El Barberillo de Lavapiés, Don Pasquale and Lucia di Lammermoor, as well as nationally acclaimed”The Opera of the Three Little Pigs,” of which he is also arranger and co-author.
Lately,
Between 2012 and 2016 he served as Musical Director of Amics de l’Òpera de Castelló (AOC), and professor at the Conservatorio Superior “Salvador Seguí” in the same city. From September 2016 he is
Emmanuel Berrido, Coordinator
Emmanuel Berrido is a Dominican-American composer and pianist with a passion for telling stories through sound, having composed music for the concert hall, the radio, or even the dance floor. His work has been performed by a variety of artists including the Amernet String Quartet, cellists Jason Calloway, Megan Chartier, and Craig Mehler, violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, and the FIU Wind Ensemble. Recent experiences have included participation at the American Composer’s Orchestra EarShot Readings, the Valencia International Performance Academy and Festival, the Indiana State University Contemporary Music Festival, the New Music Miami Festival, the Ball State University Festival of New Music, the SCI Student National Conference, the Ann Arbor Society of Musical Arts, and the Kendal Sound Arts Series. In May 2017, he was awarded the Louis Smadbeck Composition Prize in Ithaca, NY, for his work Bend the Knee for brass quintet, and in February 2018 he was awarded the Ithaca College Orchestral Composition Competition for his Danza Ritual for orchestra, to be performed by the Ithaca College Symphony Orchestra in the Spring of 2019.
Emmanuel has a degree in Music Business (Creative Production) from Miami Dade College, and a B.M. in Music Composition from Florida International University where he studied with composer Orlando Jacinto García. In May of 2018, Berrido completed his Master of Music degree under the mentorship of composers Evis Sammoutis and Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann at Ithaca College, in Upstate New York. Other educational experiences have included mentorship by composers Bernard Rands, Augusta Read Thomas, and Chinary Ung; violinist Peter Sheppard Skaerved, and clarinetist Lori Freedman.
Alongside Lindsey Eastham, Dallas Joseph Howard, and Sergio Cote, he co-founded the Un/Pitched organization and concert series, a project devoted to promoting contemporary music in the greater New York area, to enrich collaboration and educating communities about twenty-first-century art. The Un/Pitched concert series in the Fall of 2017 marked the first official collaboration between Ithaca College and Cornell University composers.
When he is not composing, performing, or practicing, Emmanuel Berrido creates websites for other musicians and small businesses, draws, and reads non-fiction books about any topic, from history and spirituality, to communication and language.
www.emmanuelberrido.com // [email protected]
Jorge V. Grossmann, Composition Program Director
Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Latin America and Europe by orchestras and ensembles such as the Norwegian Radio Orchestra, National Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine, National Symphony Orchestra of Argentina, Orquesta Filarmónica de Bogotá, Peruvian National Symphony, Kiev Camerata, Boston Musica Viva, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne, Da Capo Chamber Players, Pierrot Lunaire Ensemble Wien®, Seattle Chamber Players, Talea Ensemble, ALEA III and the Borromeo, Arden, Amernet, Mivos and JACK quartets. His awards include a Fulbright Scholar grant, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation fellowship, Fromm Music Foundation Commission, the Aaron Copland Award, Bogliasco Foundation Fellowship, Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and a fellowship from Vitae (Brazil).
He has been in residence at the Copland House, MacDowell Colony and Atlantic Center for the Arts. His orchestral work Pasiphaë received the Jacob Druckman Award from the Aspen Music Festival and was the winner of the New England Philharmonic Call for Scores. He has also received grants from the American Music Center, St. Botolph Club Foundation, Meet the Composer, Nevada Arts Council and New York State Council for the Arts. Recent commissions include the Society for New Music, Projeto GreCo of Sao Paulo, Brazil; National Symphony Orchestra of Peru for his Piano Concerto and Sao Paulo Symphony Orchestra under Marin Alsop. Jorge Villavicencio Grossmann was born in Peru in 1973. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in violin performance from Faculdade Santa Marcelina, a master’s degree in composition at Florida International University, and a DMA in composition at Boston University. His studied composition with Fredrick Kaufman, John Harbison and Lukas Foss. He currently teaches composition at Ithaca College where he also the Ithaca College Contemporary Ensemble.
For further information, please visit his website: www.shadowofthevoices.com // [email protected]
Juan Lago, Piano Program Director
Since the beginning of his career, Spanish-born pianist Juan Lago has attained numerous prizes in the foremost piano competitions in Spain. Most recently, he has been awarded at the XXIII Concorso Internazionale “Valsesia-Musica” in Varallo, Italy; the XX “Cidade de Ferrol” Piano Competition; the IX Premio Internazionale Pianistico “A. Scriabin” in Grosseto, Italy; and the VI “Compositores de España” International Competition of Las Rozas de Madrid. As a consequence of these successes, Juan Lago performed his first European tour and his first recording of an album for “Radio Clásica,” Spanish National Radio, featuring works by Beethoven, Scriabin, and Bartók.
He has performed in Portugal, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Holland, Russia, Turkey, U.S.A., China, South Korea, and in the largest Spanish cities. In these stages, he has appeared in solo recitals, chamber music concerts, or as a soloist. He has worked with conductors Ovidiu Balan, Emin Güven Yasliçam, José Ramón Encinar, Ernest Martínez Izquierdo, Joachim Jousse, Juan Luis Martínez, and Francisco de Gálvez, amongst others. He has appeared with Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana (Italy), the “Mihail Jora” Philharmonic Orchestra of Bacau (Romania), Çukurova State Symphony Orchestra (Turquía), Istambul Chamber Orchestra (Turquía), Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid, Orquesta de Córdoba, Orquesta de Valencia o Sinfónica de Málaga.
Lago has appeared as a master artist at the Washington International Piano Festival (Washington, D.C., U.S.A.); the Festival del Mediterráneo at the Palau de les Arts de Valencia, directed by Zubin Mehta; Talent Music Summer Courses de Brescia (Italy); Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne (Germany); Musical Krasnogorsk (Moscow, Russia); Schubertiaden Schnackenburg (Germany); Festival de Vila-seca, directed by Paul Badura-Skoda; and International Piano Festival in Italy (Pescara, Italy).
Chamber Music plays a fundamental role in Lago’s musical life – he has collaborated with violinists at the calliber of Vasco Vassilev, Alissa Margulis o Santiago Juan; violist Santiago Cantó; cellists Alexander Buzlov and Iván Balaguer; and pianist Belén Navarro.
Juan has appeared as a master artist at Universidad de Aveiro (Portugal), the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne (Germany), Hochschule für Musik in Aquisgrán (Germany), and Conservatorio José Iturbi in Valencia (Spain).
Lago is the Founder and Artistic Director of the Concurso Internacional de Piano de Campillos since 2007; the Premio Internacional Pianístico de Paterna since 2011; and the Director of the VIPA Piano Performance Academy. In addition to these endeavors, he also serves as the Artistic Director of the “Amadeus” concert cycle, which is organized by Fundación “Eutherpe” in Valencia, and the Festival de Música de Cámara de Campillos.
Since 1999, Juan Lago serves at professor of piano at the “José Iturbi” Conservatory in Valencia, where he became the director of the piano department in 2010. His students have been awarded numerous times in international and Spanish competitions.
Lago holds a Master’s degree in Performance and Musical Research from the Valencian International University; an Artist Diploma from the Amsterdam Conservatorium, where he studied under the tutelage of Professor Jan Wijn; a Bachelor’s degree from the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, where he studied with Professor Ana Guijarro, and a degree from the Conservatorio Superior de Málaga (Professional Degree), where he studied with Professor Juan J. Peralta. He has also been influenced by pianists Gyorgy Sebok, Eugen Indjic, Stanislav Pochekin, Imre Rohmann, Claudio Martínez Mehner, and Leonel Morales.
