Juan Leovigildo Brouwer Mezquida

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Brouwer, a renowned composer and considered among the five best living guitarists in the world, began playing guitar at the age of 13, attracted by the flamenco sound and motivated by his father, who was a doctor and amateur guitarist. His first real teacher was Isaac Nicola, who was a student of Emilio Pujol, and in turn, he was a student of Francisco Tárrega.

He gave his first recital at the age of 17; although by this time his compositions had already begun to attract attention. Prelude (1956) and Fugue (1959), both influenced by Bartók and Stravinsky, are examples of his early understanding of music not typical of the guitar. He traveled to the United States to study music at the University of Hartford and later at the Juilliard School, where Stefan Wolpe taught him composition.

Early in his career, Brouwer composed his Simple Studies 1-20 to expand the technical requirements of guitar playing. With these studies, Brouwer undoubtedly produced a major work in the development of guitar technique, making them not only technically demanding but also highly musical.

Brouwer's early works represent his Cuban context and show the influence of Afro-Cuban music and its rhythmic style. A good example of this period is Elogio de la Danza. Although it is for solo guitar, its second movement is a tribute to the Ballets Russes (clear connection with Stravinsky) and is also choreographed. This was followed by works such as his Sonograma 1, which reflects the use of uncertainty, Canticum (1968), whose first part represents the process by which an adult insect emerges from the cocoon and incidentally incorporates an unusual tuning change in the sixth string to B-flat, La espiral eterna (1971), Concerto for Guitar No. 1, Parábola (1973), and Tarantos (1974). This period incorporates the use of serialism, dodecaphonism, and open serial modes that were considered avant-garde at the time and are partly inspired by composers he listened to with preference such as Luigi Nono and Iannis Xenakis.

His final period is practically entirely minimalist, never going as far as Steve Reich, but an exploration of this style is evident. Brouwer describes it as the development of a modular system. El Decamerón Negro (1981), probably the first in this style, the Sonata (1990), Paisaje cubano con campanas (1996), and Hika (1996) in memory of Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu is the most recent.

In addition to original compositions for guitar, Brouwer is an avid arranger of other composers such as Elite Syncopations and The Entertainer by Scott Joplin, or Fool on the Hill by The Beatles (Lennon/McCartney), among many others that he has arranged for solo guitar.

Brouwer has held several official positions in Cuba, including director of the Film Institute of the Music Department of Cuba. Among his works we find a large number of guitar pieces, several concertos, and more than forty musical works for film. Leo Brouwer has active participation in the organization of the International Guitar Contest and Festival of Havana. He is also the founder of the Sound Experimentation Group of the Cuban Institute of Film Art and Industry ICAIC. In 2009, he received the National Film Prize 2009 for his fruitful connection with the island's cinematography, which he enriched with memorable scores, and in 2010, he received the Tomás Luis de Victoria Prize. A Day in November is a small piece he composed in 1968 with a clear influence from the Romantic music that characterized Tárrega.

Leo Brouwer brings together, in addition to one of the most important compositional trajectories of today, with a catalog of 300 works, other equally important facets such as that of guitarist, offering more than 600 concerts in more than 40 countries, and creating new technical resources for the guitar, which have caused one of the most notable transformations in the technique of the instrument in the 20th century; that of orchestra conductor, conducting more than 100 orchestras and being the principal conductor of orchestras such as the National Orchestra of Cuba (1981-2003) or the Córdoba Orchestra (1992-2001); that of pedagogue at the Conservatory of Havana, where he made great innovations by introducing new subjects in the teaching of composition, at the Musical Theater of Havana (1962), at ICAIC with the direction of the Sound Experimentation Group (1968), in Córdoba in recent years he has conducted fifteen seasons of educational concerts with the orchestra of that city; and that of musicologist with numerous essays, articles, talks, and lectures.

Musicians such as Americans Charles Ives and John Cage, Italian Luigi Nono, and German H. W. Henze, decisively influence his work, but always maintaining a series of strongly personal characteristics. His creation assumes all the freedom offered by the cultural pluralism of our time, the evocation of the ancient alternates with the modern in his work, and the relationship between the universal and the national constitutes one of his compositional pillars.

The Cuban composer considers music as a shaper of an audience, its social function, and its relationship with other arts. Among his most personal compositional features stands out the use of intonations derived from African musical culture and present in Cuban music; the use of traditional forms together with open forms in which the performer (or even the audience) can vary and improvise on the work; the modular composition that relates him to the methods of Paul Klee at the Bauhaus; the thematic development that derives from a single motif, and his own self-quotation throughout all his work in the manner of a spiral in time that gives great unity and cohesion to the entirety of his catalog.

Among his work, in addition to about 102 film scores for Cuban cinema, stand out the series of four Sonogramas (1963-72); Homenaje a Mingus, for jazz and orchestra (1965); Tarantos for guitar (1974); Metáfora del amor, for guitar and magnetic tape (1974); Concierto de Lieja, for guitar and orchestra (1980); Paisaje cubano con lluvia, for guitar orchestra (1984), and various instrumental versions of Pictures at Another Exhibition (2000-10); as well as numerous orchestrations, versions, and transcriptions.

Latin Grammy for Best Classical Music Album
He has been granted more than 200 distinctions in different countries, among which we can cite the titles of Doctor Honoris Causa in Havana and Santiago de Chile; the National Music Prize of Cuba; the MIDEM Prize (Marché International du Disque et de l'Edition Musicale) from Cannes; the Pablo Neruda Order or the Goffredo Petrassi Prize for composition. In September 2009, the Society of Authors organized a tribute to commemorate his figure on his 70th anniversary. And recently, on November 11th, he achieved the award for Best Classical Music Album, for Integral String Quartets, published by Sello Autor, at the XI edition of the Latin Grammy Awards.

Guitar Concertos
Concerto for Guitar No. 1
Concerto No. 2 "de Lieja" (1981)
Concerto No. 3 "Elegiaco" (1986)
Concerto No. 4 "de Toronto" (1987)
Concerto No. 5 "de Helsinki"
Concerto No. 6 "de Volos"
Concerto No. 7 "La Habana"
Concerto No. 8 "Cantata de Perugia"
Concerto No. 9 "de Benicassim"
Concerto No. 10 "Book of Signs for Two Guitars and Orchestra"
Concerto No. 11 "Concerto da Requiem (in memoriam Toru Takemitsu)"

Solo Guitar
Sonata
Epigrammatic Preludes
Two Cuban Popular Themes (Lullaby, Bewitching Eyes)
Two Cuban Popular Airs (Creole Guajira, Zapateado)
Praise of the Dance
Simple Studies
Ten New Studies
Canticum
A Day in November
Characteristic Dance
The Black Decameron
Three Concert Dances
Rite of the Orishas
Simple Studies No. 1-20 in Four Volumes
Fugue No. 1
Hika "In Memorium Toru Takemitsu"
The Eternal Spiral
Micropieces (Duo)
Incidental Peasant Music (Duo)
Parable
Cuban Landscape with Rumba
Cuban Landscape with Bells
Cuban Landscape with Sadness
Cuban Landscape with Rain
Cuban Landscape with Celebration (2008)
Untitled Piece
Untitled Pieces 2 and 3
Prelude
Rite of the Orishas for Solo Guitar
Suite in D
Tarantos
Toccata for Four or More Guitars
Three Notes
Variations on a Theme by Django Reinhardt
Three Latin American Pieces (Arrangements) Dance of the Highlands, the Death of the Angel.
Remote Songs (Four Guitars)
Journey to the Origin
About Sky, Air, and Smile (for Guitar Octet)
The City of Columns

Other Instruments
Sonata for Solo Cello
String Quartet No. 1
String Quartet No. 2
String Quartet No. 3
Life Itself (for Piano, Violin, Cello, and Percussion)
Ballad (Flute and Strings)
Song of Deeds (for Chamber Orchestra)
Amatory Songs (for Mixed Choir, on texts by Federico García Lorca and José Hernández)

Recordings
From Bach to The Beatles (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. I. Brouwer by Brouwer. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. II. Brouwer the Performer. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. III. Re-creations. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. IV. Concertos for Guitar and Orchestra. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. V. Brouwer by the Masters Rey Guerra and Joaquín Clerch. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. VI. Presence at the International Guitar Festival... (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. VII. Ensembles with Guitars. (EGREM)
The Guitar Works of Leo Brouwer. Vol. VIII. Memorable Performances. (EGREM)
Rara iClassics Link (Deutsche Grammophon)
(about)
Leo Brouwer Collection Vol.1-6 (Frame)