Miguel del Aguila
By Mariana Llamas-Cendon / Amigos805.com
Miguel del Aguila, a Ventura County resident since 1992, was recently nominated by the Latin Recording Academy, organizers of the Latin Grammy Awards, for his 2009 production named “Salon Buenos Aires.”
The award was nominated under the Best Classical Album and Best Contemporary Classical Composition categories
“The conductor from the ensemble called me and said the CD (‘Salon Buenos Aires’) got two nominations,” Del Aguila said. “It was a surprise and I was very happy, it was a good thing we worked very hard on it.”
Even though neither Aguila nor “Salon Buenos Aires” brought awards back home following the Nov. 11 awards ceremony held in Las Vegas, Del Aguila said he is taking the setback in stride.
“I felt bad for five minutes because I didn’t get it,” said Del Aguila during an telephone interview with Amigos805.com. “I have more CDs coming out so let’s hope the next one will work.”
If you think you know classical music… think again. Miguel’s music is certainly classical with a Latin American twist.
“I grew up in Latin America, so my music has a lot of Latin in it,” Del Aguila said. “I am not constrained by what you would think concert classical music should sound like. My music has always been between Latin and classical.”
“Salon Buenos Aires” album definitely gives us a good example of what Miguel is talking about.
“(The CD) is pretty much about Buenos Aires of the ’50s, ’60s, and tango,” Del Aguila said.
The nomination did represents a big publicity boost, he said.
“The record sells much more, the radio broadcasts go off, and the CD is distributed worldwide,” Del Aguila said. “I hear from the record company that they are out of stock of it.”
However, a new supply of “Salon Buenos Aires” should be back in stores.
Sweet home California
Del Aguila is a transplant from Montevideo, the capital city of Uruguay, where he was born in 1957, and where he started his musical career by composing music and even singing in a chorus by the age 5.
“I always wrote music since I was a kid,” he said. “I studied in Uruguay… my mentors and teachers who I really credit for my career were my first teachers there.”
Twenty years later, Del Aguila and his parents made California their home.
“I was 20 and my family moved here. We had to move because of the military government there,” he said. “We didn’t get asylum because the fascist military government was backed by (former President) Nixon.”
Once in California, Del Aguila was awarded a scholarship from the San Francisco Conservatory. The next step in his career was Vienna, Austria, where he spent 10 years of his life studying at the Hochschule für Musik and the Konservatorioum.
“I graduated and I ended up staying there, I was working, teaching, accompanying of the opera and writing music there,” Del Aguila said.
During that decade, Del Aguila received the Kennedy Center Friedheim Award in 1995, and performed in Moscow, Zurich, Vienna, Budapest, Prague, Tokyo, Rome and other world capitals.
Mainly due to his father’s declining health, Del Aguila went back to California in 1992.
“I actually started missing America. My parents were here, my whole family, so I think that where your parents are is home,” Del Aguila said.
Del Aguila didn’t stay quiet, he founded and directed the young musicians group Voices, and was the music director of the Ojai Camerata.
In 2000, he moved to New York City for four years. During that time he was the Resident Composer of the Chautauqua Institution Summer Festival.
By 2005, Del Aguila signed a two-year contract as Composer in Residence with the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra.
Del Aguila received a number of awards from 2008 to 2009, such as the Peter S. Reed Foundation Award, MTC Magnum Opus/Kathryn Gould Award, the Argosy Foundation for Contemporary Music, The Copland Foundation and the Lancaster Symphony Composer of the Year Award 2009.
Dead composers in VC
Del Aguila considers he isn’t a prophet in his own land of Ventura County.
“When I first moved here in 1992, I did a lot locally: I wrote for all the ensembles for the symphony, I conducted the Ojai Camerata … but as my career went more and more outside of here I realized that Ventura County didn’t evolve, pretty much stayed there,” Del Aguila said.
From his perspective Ventura County has become too conservative in the classical music scene.
“When it comes to programming music they have done the main work like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony and it is probably because of the financial situation and marketing, so I kind of lost interest,” he said.
Del Aguila hopes that region’s classical music scene opens up to different proposals and styles, instead of, as he said: “Play the same dead composers over and over.”
“Nadie es profeta en su tierra (No one is a prophet in their own land),” Del Aguila added in Spanish.