Currículum

Mario Gosálvez Blanco was born in Madrid, Spain in 1965.

He started his music studies at Madrid’s Royal Conservatory from 1980 to 1986. He was a disciple of José Alamá, Valentín Ruiz and Ernesto Halfter while also attending composition classes with Antón Garcia Abril and Román Alis.

In 1987, he traveled to the United Status to study composition with Elinor Armer and David Conte at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. He also took part in Alden Jenks’ Seminars on Electronic Music and attended classes at the Early Music Exploratorium in Berkeley, California with Laurette Goldberg. While there he studied the harpsichord with Gideon Meir and early Chamber music interpretation. He composed and premiered works for piano, a “Missa Brevis” for chorus, organ and strings, various works of sacred music, and a suite for three guitars, “Noche”, which, with the support of soloist David Tannenbaum and the “Amsterdam Guitar Trio”, entered the repertoire of chamber music for guitar.

In the summers of 1988 and 1989, he continued his composition studies at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado; there he composed and premiered chamber music projects.

In the fall of 1989 he came to the Manhattan School of Music in New York to study composition with Nils Vigeland and George Tsontakis and orchestration with Gianpaolo Bracally. For the concert and lecture series “New Music by New Composers”, he premiered among other works, his Sextet “Danza del Silencio”, “Destellos” for guitar and trumpet and “Requiem para dos voces”. In 1991 he premiered his string quintet “Prosgeanode” at Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall in New York City.

He graduated in 1991 from the Manhattan School of Music and won first prize in composition for his experimental work for orchestra.

Since the fall of 1991 he has lived in Madrid where he combines composing with other diverse musical projects for stage, advertising, television, theater and dance for independent companies, soundtracks for film, etc… He is a musical producer for Cadena SER radio in Radio Madrid’s studios. He also composes music for conventional radio programs on Radio Madrid-FM, M-80 Radio, Cadena 40 Principales and Sinfo Radio.

In 1998, the United National Cultural Association commissioned a work to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the Declaration of Human Rights. He composed a Symphonic Poem which premiered under the direction of Pascual Ossa at the National Auditorium of Madrid.  In April 2002, this work was performed at a private concert in honor of the United Nations Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan in the Royal Theater of Madrid. The work was directed by Max Bragado Darman and performed by the Madrid Symphony Orchestra and Chorus.

In recent years, he has composed a variety of choral pieces. In addition to number of works for chamber music, including the piano piece “Notch”, recorded by Gustavo Diaz Jerez for Spanish National Radio station Radio 2 and two grand orchestra overtures.  

His violin and symphonic orchestra concert “Arlequin” was awarded the XX Queen Sofia Prize for Musical Composition in 2002 by the Ferrer Salat Foundation. It was premiered at the Monumental Theater of Madrid and broadcast on live radio to all of Spain in October 2003. The concert was performed by Spanish Radio and Television’s orchestra and directed by Adrian Leaper. Manuel Guillen was the violin soloist.

He has been commission for important orchestra compositions by a range of companies like Siemens, for its 2003 Christmas concert, and the Rafael del Pino Foundation. The Leon Spanish Music Festival in July 2004, the Authors Society General of Spain, the United Nations Cultural Association of Madrid have all also commissioned works. The Complutense Lyrical Society together with the City Hall of Alcala de Henares commissioned a choral and orchestra suite to premiere in October 2005 for the commemorative concert in honor of the 400 year anniversary of Don Quijote.