Biography
Jairo Duarte-López
Jairo Duarte-López was born in Bogotá, Colombia. His works have been performed by ensembles such as the New York City Opera, UCLA Philharmonia, Cincinnati Opera, Arabesque Winds, Eastman Triana, Musica Nova, Eastman Composers Sinfonietta, New York Miniaturist Ensemble, Eastman Contemporary Percussion Ensemble, and the Eastman Philharmonia Chamber Orchestra. His music has been featured at the 2022 Hear Now Music Festival; 2015 Cincinnati Opera Fusion: New Works Workshop; 2012 Montclair State University Opera Workshop; 2011 Kurt Weill Festival in Germany; the 2009 New York City Opera’s VOX Festival; and the 29th Annual New Music Festival at Bowling Green State University.
Duarte-López’s music includes works for soloists, chamber ensembles, choir, opera, orchestra, electro-acoustic music and multimedia. He is the recipient of numerous recognitions such as the 2013 BMO Mainstage Award for Bodas de Sangre and the Director’s Choice award for Car Crash Opera at the Boston Metro Opera’s Contempo Festival – International Composer’s Competition. He is also the recipient of the National Prize of Music in Composition by the Ministry of Culture of Colombia for the work Ekphrasis sobre ‘El Miedo’ de Tanguy for violoncello solo, commissioned by cellist David Gerstein (principal of the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra).
Along with composer Michaela Eremiášová, Duarte-López is a co-founder of Eremia-du-Arte Music. Together, they have composed and produced music for films, television, commercials, documentaries, and trailers. Recent work includes the soundtrack for the feature films High School Revenge (Lifetime Movie) by director Marieke Niestadt, as well as Red Camaro, Fear of A Black Planet and Brown Paper Bag by director Detdrich McClure; the trailer work Phenomenon (for orchestra and 60-piece choir recorded in Czech Republic) which was placed on FOX Searchlight Pictures’ TV Spot for the film Brooklyn and The Weinstein Company’s TV spot for the film Lion (Nicole Kidman); the operatic award-winning score for the short film Car Crash Opera; the orchestral main theme for the Toronto Blue Jays’ 2008 baseball season; and music for various University of Rochester Medical Center TV spots featured during the 2014 Super Bowl. Additional work includes the original score for productions by Discovery Channel, National Geographic, FOX Telecolombia, TLN Telelatino, CMT, and Rogers SportsNet.
In 2010-2011, as a commission from the Kurt Weill Festival with the George Eastman House and the Eastman School of Music, Duarte-López and Eremiášová’s music was featured at the Arsenal Theater in Berlin, Germany. The live-to-picture performance, with Duarte-López conducting, consisted of over one hour of original compositions for silent films from the 1910’s to 1930’s by Moholy-Nagy, Walter Ruttmann, and Lotte Reiniger.
Stage works include a commission by the John J. Cali School of Music to co-compose, with Eremiášová, the operatic work Bodas de Sangre (Blood Wedding) based on the play by Federico García Lorca for the 2012 Montclair State University Opera Workshop as well as a commision to co-compose additional scenes for the unfinished opera Meet John Doe by the late Mexican composer Daniel Catán (Florencia en el Amazons, Il Postino), by the Cincinnati Opera for its 2014 Opera Fusion: New Works Workshop.
From 2003 to 2008, Duarte-López was a Teaching Assistant in composition, orchestration, computer music, and notation for the Composition Department at Eastman. From 2008 to 2011, he co-created and co-instructed a year-long Film Scoring Techniques course for the Department of Jazz Studies and Contemporary Media and for the Eastman Community Music School. This course was developed in consultation and with funding by Emmy–winning composer Jeff Beal (House of Cards). From 2012 to 2016, Duarte-López served as adjunct faculty of Film Scoring Techniques at the Eastman School of Music.
Duarte-López’s studies include a Bachelor of Music in Film Scoring from the Berklee College of Music. He also holds a Master of Arts and a PhD in Composition from the Eastman School of Music. His principal teachers include David Liptak, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, Allan Schindler, and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, Vuk Kulenovic, and Tibor Pusztai.