Alfredo Rugeles

Alfredo Rugeles Asuaje (born 13 December 1949) is an American and Venezuelan composer and conductor. He is the artistic director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra and has devoted much of his career to promoting contemporary Latin American music. Since 1991, he has been the artistic director of the Latin American Music Festival in Caracas.

Career Rugeles was born in Washington, D.C., where his parents were serving in the diplomatic corps. Between 1958 and 1976, he studied music theory and solfège, harmony, music history and aesthetics, piano, guitar, singing, choral conducting, and composition at the Juan Manuel Olivares School of Music in Caracas. During this period, his teachers included Adda Elena de Sauce, Juan Bautista Plaza, Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera, Ángel Sauce, Eduardo Plaza, Gerty Haas, Guiomar Narváez, Mariela Valladares, Antonio Lauro, Flaminia de Sola, Carmen Teresa de Hurtado, Fedora Alemán, Alberto Grau, and Yannis Ioannidis, where he obtained in 1977, his degree as a performing singing teacher (Fedora Alemán Chair).

At the same time, from 1971 to 1972, he studied orchestral, choral and chamber conducting with professors Gonzalo Castellanos, Antonio Estévez, Abraham Abreu, Modesta Bor, Eric Colón and José Clemente Laya, among others. In 1976, he received a diploma in choral conducting from the Alberto Grau Chair at the Schola Cantorum Foundation in Caracas-CONAC.

From 1968 to 1976, he was deputy director, tenor and guitarist of La Schola Cantorum de Caracas.

Rugeles studied composition from 1970 to 1976, focusing on 20th-century composition techniques, with Greek-Venezuelan maestro Yannis Ioannidis at the Juan Manuel Olivares School of Music in Caracas. In 1975 and 1976, he attended the Latin American contemporary music courses held in Uruguay and Argentina for the first time as a participant, returning in 1982 as a teacher.

In 1976, he moved to Germany with a scholarship from the National Council for Culture (CONAC) and studied composition and live electronics with Günther Becker, conducting with Wolfgang Trommer, and piano with Christian de Bruyn at the Robert Schumann Institute in Düsseldorf, Germany (Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Rheinland), where he obtained diplomas in composition in 1979 and conducting in 1981.

In 1977 and 1978, he participated in international conducting courses taught by Sergiu Celibidache in Trier, Germany, and in the international conducting course with Michel Tabachnik in Hilversum, Holland, in 1979. He also participated in the conducting course with Franco Ferrara in Rome, Italy, in 1981. In 1978 and 1980, he was a member of the composition workshop during the summer courses of new music in Darmstadt, as a scholarship holder and conductor.

He was associate conductor of the Caracas Municipal Symphony Orchestra between 1982 and 1984. In 1984, he was appointed artistic director of the orchestra, a position he held until 1987. In this position, he is responsible for the organisation and artistic direction of the Latin American Music Festival. In November 1993, during the World Music Days held in Mexico, he was elected Member of the Executive Committee of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM). In 1995, at the General Assembly in Essen, Germany, he was re-elected to his position.

In 1996, he participated as a guest professor invited by the Postgraduate Studies Commission of the Faculty of Humanities and Education of the Central University of Venezuela in the Master's Degree in Latin American Musicology with the course: Musical Thought in Latin America in the 20th Century. In July 2001, he won the position of Professor of Orchestral Conducting in the Master's Degree in Music at the Simón Bolívar University, where he teaches.

Since 1991, he has been the Artistic Director of the Simón Bolívar Symphony Orchestra.

Catalogue of works Pequeña Suite for solo piano. 1972–73 Mutaciones for Nonet or String Orchestra. 1974 Polución for String Quartet, Viola, Cello and Piano. 1975 La Guitarra For mixed a cappella choir, with poetry by Manuel Felipe Rugeles. 1976 Canto a la Paz For mixed a cappella choir, with poetry by Manuel Felipe Rugeles. 1976 Inventio for solo clarinet. 1976 Inventio, version for solo cello. 1983–2003 Puntos y Líneas for Instrumental Ensemble of 15 Soloists. 1977 Thingsphonia Electroacoustic Music. 1978 Somosnueve for Grupo de Cámara. 1978/79 Camino entre lo sutil e inerrante for Orchestra. 1979 El Ocaso del Héroe for Reciter, Mixed Choir and Chamber Orchestra, with poetry by Manuel Felipe Rugeles. 1982 Tanguitis for solo piano. 1984 Sinfonola for Chamber Orchestra. 1988 Hace veinte años (Tribute to The Beatles). 1988 Oración para clamar por los oprimidos. 1989 Lady Aoi. Incidental electronic music composed for Yukio Mishima play. 1990 Juglares del Video. 1991 Hiroshima. 1993 27 de Febrero. 1993 Judenatru. 1996 Tanguitis. Version for flute and guitar. 1998 Hablan las Estrellas. 2000 Sal-Cita. For solo piano. 2003

Awards and nominations 1979: National Composition Award for his work “Somosnueve“ 1985: Municipal Music Award for his work “Taguitis“