Anthony Davis
Opera News has called Anthony Davis a national treasure for his pioneering work in opera. Performer, teacher and composer, equally at home in the idioms of classical music and jazz, Davis’s adventurous oeuvre straddles the range of genres and scales from opera to choral, chamber and orchestral works. His operas include X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X, with a libretto by Thulani Davis, Under The Double Moon, with a libretto by Deborah Atherton, Tania, with librettist Michael John La Chiusa, and Amistad, also with librettist Thulani Davis. He also composed the music for the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Tony Kushner’s Angels In America.
With commissions from the San Francisco Symphony, the Brooklyn Philharmonic, the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, St. Lukes Chamber Ensemble, the Kansas City Symphony and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, among others, Davis’s works have been widely performed in the US and internationally and recorded on a number of labels. His music is published by G. Schirmer, Inc.
A graduate of Yale University with awards and recognitions too numerous to list, including a Guggenheim Fellowship and residencies at the MacDowell Colony in the United States and the Bellagio Center in Italy, Anthony Davis is currently professor of music at the University of California, San Diego. He is a member of the faculty of the Composer Librettist Development Project of American Lyric Theater.
Felipe Pérez Santiago
Felipe Pérez Santiago trained as a guitarist before embarking on a career as a composer that has established him as one of the leading musical voices of his generation. A natural crossover artist, Felipe moves fluidly between the worlds of acoustic and electronic music and writes prolifically for film and dance as well as for the voice.
With degrees from the Centro de Investigación y Estudios Musicales in Mexico City, the Royal School of Music in London and the Conservatory of Rotterdam, he has held residencies throughout the world and has composed for leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Kronos Quartet, the Rotterdam Philharmonic, the Czech National Orchestra, the national choirs of Holland, Spain and Mexico, the Octeto Ibérico and his own ensemble, Mal’Akh, which recently released its first recording.
The recipient of the Residence Prize of the Institute of Electroacoustic Music of Bourges, France, the Music for Dance Competition of the Onassis Foundation, Greece, and the Kronos Under 30 competition, he is currently a grantee of Mexico’s prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. His works have been performed in major theaters, including the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City, the Theatre de la Ville of Paris, and New York’s Carnegie Hall.
Felipe was a participating artist in the inaugural season of México Canta in 2011 and returns as a faculty mentor in 2013.
