Juan Orrego-Salas

Who is Juan Orrego-Salas?

Juan Antonio Orrego Salas is a Chilean composer of contemporary classical music and musicologist.

He was a student of Randall Thompson and Aaron Copland 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, his First Piano Concerto, the vocal works Canciones Castellanas and El Alba del Alhelí, the piece Un Canto para Bolívar composed for Quilapayún, the most important ensemble of Nueva Canción Chilena, and many orchestral, choral, and chamber works.