New Vanguard Composers
COT is proud to announce the fifth and sixth Vanguard Emerging Opera Composers: Gillian Rae Perry and Dr. Carlos R. Carrillo.
Gillian Rae Perry will begin the first year of the program in the fall of 2022, and Dr. Carlos R. Carrillo will begin in 2023.
Gillian Rae Perry is a composer who enjoys finding ways that her music can break people out of their day-to-day routine and invite them to glimpse the extraordinary all around them. Perry's work has been performed by TVMF orchestra, the Mostly Modern Orchestra, Euclid Quartet, Aperture Duo, and the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra members. In 2018, she was awarded a Composition Fellowship with the Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra; she was a Composer Fellow for both the 2018-2019 and 2019-2020 seasons. In the summers of 2016 and 2018, Perry had the opportunity to study abroad at the EAMA-Nadia Boulanger Institute. She studied harmony, counterpoint, musicianship, and composition, which greatly influenced her process as a composer. Perry is also influenced by text and how text can interact with music in spoken and unspoken ways.
Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Composer Carlos R. Carrillo Cotto holds degrees from the Eastman School of Music (BM), Yale University (MM), and the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D.). His music has been performed at the American Composers Orchestra's Sonido de las Americas Festival, the Casals Festival and played by the Young Musician Foundation's Debut Orchestra, Sequitur, Network for New Music, Prism Quartet, Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, New York Youth Symphony, and members of the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra. Dr. Carrillo's performances abroad include London, Mexico, and Spain. Recent performances include The Gathering Grounds, commissioned by the Casals Festival, and a performance of selections from the opera in progress, La Pasión Segun Antígona Perez, at the Pregones Threatre in the Bronx. In addition, he has taught composition at DePauw University, Reed College, and the Conservatory of Music in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In the Spring of 2013 Dr. Carrillo was appointed Assistant Professor of Composition-Theory at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and has taught there since.
The emerging Opera Composer Residency is supported by a generous grant from the Mellon Foundation.
