Juan Antonio Orrego Salas (b. Santiago, Chile

Santiago, Chile

Santiago , also known as Santiago de Chile, is the capital and largest city of Chile, and the center of its largest conurbation . It is located in the country's central valley, at an elevation of above mean sea level...

, January 18, 1919) is a Chile

Chile

Chile ,officially the Republic of Chile , is a country in South America occupying a long, narrow coastal strip between the Andes mountains to the east and the Pacific Ocean to the west. It borders Peru to the north, Bolivia to the northeast, Argentina to the east, and the Drake Passage in the far...

an composer of contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...

 and musicologist.

He was a student of Randall Thompson

Randall Thompson

Randall Thompson was an American composer, particularly noted for his choral works.-Career:He attended Harvard University, became assistant professor of music and choir director at Wellesley College, and received a doctorate in music from the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music...

 and Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland

Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...

 in the United States, and later he settled in that country in the early 1960s to work at Indiana University, where he co-founded the Latin American Music Center.

He has been one of the foremost Chilean composers and one of the most widely known of the musicians from that country around the world.

Highlights from his catalogue include the cantata América, no en vano invocamos tu nombre (on texts by Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....

), his First Piano Concerto, the vocal works Canciones Castellanas and El Alba del Alhelí, the piece Un Canto para Bolívar composed for Quilapayún

Quilapayún

Quilapayún are an instrumental and vocal folk music group from Chile and among the longest lasting and most influential exponents of the Nueva Canción Chilena movement. Formed in Chile during the mid-1960s, the group became inseparable with the revolution that occurred in the popular music of the...

, the most important ensemble of Nueva Canción Chilena, and many orchestral, choral, and chamber works.

External links

• bio page
• Orrego Salas's La Ciudad Celeste