Composer-in-Residence, Carlos Carrillo

Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Composer Carlos R. Carrillo Cotto holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale University (MM), and the University of Pennsylvania (PhD). His teachers have included Tania León, Samuel Adler, Warren Benson, Joseph Schwantner, Christopher Rouse, Jacob Druckman, Martin Bresnick, Roberto Sierra, George Crumb, James Primosch, Jay Reise, and Steve Mackey. His music navigates the space between simplicity and complexity and the results of this conflict. In the program notes for his string quartet Versos, he writes, “The movements gain in expressive power by their brevity and concentration of ideas. This, I believe, summarizes the essence of my creative work.” Dr. Carrillo has received numerous awards, including the Bearns Prize, the Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, BMI, and ASCAP awards. In 2004, he received a commission from the American Composers Orchestra, the second such work commissioned for ACO by the BMI Foundation, Inc./ Carlos Surinach Fund. Music and the Anthology, Casals Festival, the New York Youth Symphony, Concert Artists Guild, Boston Opera Collaborative, and Chamber Music America, among others, have commissioned him. He is the 2023-25 Vanguard Opera Composer with Chicago Opera Theater. In 2023, he received an Illinois Arts Council Artist Fellowship.

Dr. Carrillo’s music has been performed at the American Composers Orchestra’s Sonido de las Americas Festival and the Casals Festival. It has been played by the Young Musician Foundation’s Debut Orchestra, Sequitur, Network for New Music, Prism Quartet, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, and members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Performances abroad include Lontano Ensemble in London, Trio Morelia in Mexico, and Esclats in Spain.

In 2002, his symphonic work Cantares was featured at the inaugural “Synergy: Composer and Conductor” program presented by the Los Angeles Philharmonic and American Symphony Orchestra League. In 1998, he received one of the first Aaron Copland Awards from the Copland Heritage Association, and he was the 2001-2003 Van Lier Emerging Composer Fellow with the ACO. In the spring of 2005, Dr. Carrillo was invited to the inaugural John Duffy Composers Institute as part of the 9th Annual Virginia Arts Festival. In 2007, he received a fellowship from the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. From 2007 to 2009, Dr. Carrillo was the musical director of the Wabash Valley Youth Symphony. Last year, his music was the focus of concerts by Third Coast Percussion in San Juan and Chicago, and he was the Composer in Residence at Sam Houston State University 2024 Contemporary Music Festival.

This spring his opera Remedios Varios para las aflicciones del cuerpo y el espíritu was premiered by Chicago Opera Theater. He has taught composition at DePaul University, Reed College, and the Conservatory of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He is currently an Associate Professor of Composition-Theory at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Learn more about Carlos Carrillo by visiting his website at www.carloscarrillo.net.

Previous Composers-in-Residence

2019-25 Eric Nathan

2011-19 David Rakowski

2005-11 Peter Child

2002-05 Andy Vores

2000-02 Richard Cornell

1997-00 Michael Gandolfi

1994-97 Marjorie Merryman

1989-94 Richard Cornell

1985-89 Robert Kyr