American conductor and composer Efraín Amaya was born in Venezuela, where he began his musical training. Continuing his studies in the United States, he earned two Bachelor’s of music degrees in composition and piano from Indiana University and a Master’s in orchestral conducting from Rice University.
After returning to Venezuela, Maestro Amaya became the Music Director and conductor for one of the “El Sistema” Youth Symphony Orchestras based in the “Núcleo La Rinconada” in Caracas. He then returned to the USA, where he held the position of Resident Conductor and Artist Lecturer in Music Theory at Carnegie Mellon University from 1993 to 2009. He also served as Associate Conductor with the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra from 1994 to 2007. In addition, he has been the Music Director and conductor of the Greensburg American Opera, the Three Rivers Young People’s Orchestra, the Westmoreland Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Carnegie Mellon Summer Orchestra and Wind Ensemble, and the Carnegie Mellon Contemporary Ensemble. From the Fall of 2012 to 2017, Maestro Amaya was one of the four national adjudicators for the National YoungArts Foundation in Miami for their national competition selection of finalists and Presidential Scholars nominees. He was also the Western Plains Opera General Co-Director from 2017 to 2023. As a guest conductor, Mr. Amaya has appeared with several orchestras in the USA, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, and Italy.
As a guest conductor Mr. Amaya has appeared with the Orquesta Sinfónica de Venezuela, the Orquesta Sinfónica Municipal de Caracas, the Orquesta Sinfónica Simón Bolívar del Táchira, the Jóvenes Arcos de Venezuela, the Sinfónica de Maracaibo, the Giovane Filarmonica Del Veneto, the Orquesta Sinfónica de Tucumán (Argentina), the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de Veracruz (Mexico), the Westmoreland Symphony Orchestra, the McKeesport Symphony Orchestra, the Washington Symphony Orchestra, the Edgewood Symphony Orchestra, the SOS Venezuela Concerts Symphony Orchestra, the Heredia Symphony Orchestra (Costa Rica), and several youth symphonies.
Mr. Amaya’s compositions have been selected for performance at major international festivals, including the Seattle Symphony’s Viva la Música Festival; the V Congreso Iberoamericano de Llíria, Spain, the Festival de Música de Santa Catarina in Brazil, the American Composers Orchestra Festival of Venezuelan Music at Weill Recital Hall in New York; the II Congreso Puertorriqueño de Creación Musical in San Juan among many others.
In 2004, Efraín Amaya received a Fellowship from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. He was also a Meet The Composer Composer-in-Residence with Gateway to the Arts, WQED-FM, Renaissance City Wind Music Society, and Shaler School District from September 2001 to September 2004. His opera Clepsydra premiered as part of the First Night celebrations in Pittsburgh as a collaborative multimedia performance for tape, live performers, and edited video projection, sponsored by the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh and the Heinz Endowment.
Recent commissions include Caracolas for solo piano and wind ensemble, commissioned by The North Dakota Music Teachers Association to be premiered on June 4, 2025 during their MTA Conference to take place in Minot; Majarete for two violins, commissioned by the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra as part of the 2021 Knoxville Symphony 1x1 Commissioning Project; Carousel for eight cellos, commissioned by the Portland Youth Philharmonic as part of their Youth Orchestra Commissioning Initiative and premiered virtually on November 14, 2020. Robert Boudreau, conductor, and founder of the American Wind Symphony Orchestra has also commissioned him Marahuaka, a concerto for three marimbas and Wind Symphony Orchestra; Epona’s Portal, a concerto for bassoon and Wind Symphony Orchestra, a Suite of Latin Dances and Jokilis y Gorilas among three other arrangements of his pieces for the AWSO. Other recent works include Archipiélagos for Eb clarinet and piano, commissioned by Venezuelan virtuoso clarinetist Jorge Montilla; Irmgard’s Mementos, a three-movement piano solo work commissioned by Tanner Film and Art; and Chocolat for solo bassoon, commissioned and premiered by Jim R. Whipple. His cello concerto Un Camino, commissioned by renowned cellist Kim Cook with a grant from the Pennsylvania Arts Council, premiered in August 2013. Amaya’s two-act opera La Bisbetica, commissioned and performed by the International Opera Theater, premiered in August 2010 in Italy; it was then invited to participate in the Bergamo International Festival of 2011 at Bergamo, Italy.
Maestro Amaya founded and was the Music Director of the Point Chamber Orchestra, which made its debut performance during the summer of 2006 with a tour of seven concerts in Italy, performing in venues such as the Fenice Theater in Venice, the Basilica of St. Francis of Assisi, and the Parco della Musica in Rome. The Point Chamber Orchestra made a commercial CD released in 2009 with Albany Records label [TROY 1075]. It featured two of Mr. Amaya’s chamber operas: Clepsydra: An Operatic Installation with 13 Performers and Phantasmagorilla? No! Phantasmagoria, receiving excellent reviews by Pittsburgh Magazine, the American Record Guide (Amaya has created a sound-world that is aggressive, sad, colorfully floating clouds, vague and yet tonal – a magical atmosphere) and Fanfare Magazine (The music here is often intensely beautiful. Whereas in Phantasmagorilla one admires the sure hand of construction and, indeed, the wit, here one is transported to what might be termed higher realms). In the spring of 2015, The Point Chamber Orchestra was reinstated as Arts Crossing, a non-profit organization dedicated to interdisciplinary arts.
Mr. Amaya was invited and completed a residency at Yaddo, NY, during the summer of 2012, where he worked on his chamber opera Constellations that premiered in December of 2015, in Philadelphia. The recording of this world premiere became his latest CD called “Constellations” and was released on December 15, 2020, with Albany Records label [TROY 1846]. Other recent CD releases include Jorge Montilla’s release in June of 2024 of his CD Archipiélagos, including Mr. Amaya’s piece with the same name for Eb clarinet and piano, written for Montilla with Samek Music [SKU: CC0083]. In June of 2023, the Dalí Quartet released their
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An Operatic Installation with 13 Performers
My career as a musician has developed between orchestral conducting and the art of music composition. My first serious interest was piano performance, which is what had me started in this life path. At this point I can confidently say that I have been very fortunate to have maintained a rich conducting career; in 2015 I was appointed Director and Conductor of the Minot Symphony Orchestra, in Minot, ND, which has brought very new perspectives and experiences into my life. However, writing new music, and the act of creating itself, is the other aspect of my work that I treasure, and keep pursuing to achieve new levels of depth and meaning. I could say that I am in a mature phase of this work, and I enjoy tremendously the challenge of creating new and unexpected pieces. As a member of a global community, I am continuously influenced by multiple sources: the twenty century master composers of our Western culture, like Ravel, Debussy, Stravinsky, Bartók, as well as Latin American composers such as Ginastera, Revueltas, Villa-Lobos and Antonio Estévez, but also the ones from the old Western world (Bach, Mozart, Beethoven) whose music I absorbed in my early education. I also have a strong influence of Latin American rhythms and sounds in my work, but no more than the rich range of American music of the last century. In synthesis, this is a time when art and music travel fast and easily, and I feel the excitement of being part of it, as a creator, audience, critic and educator. It has been said of my work that it usually has a lyric, or poetic, almost cinematic quality, where emotions and imagery surface from the musical gestures. Some of my most significant mentors and teachers throughout my career in composition are John Eaton, Juan Orrego-Salas, Ib Nørholm, Daniel Börtz and Ellsworth Milburn, in conducting are Samuel Jones, Uri Mayer and Benjamin Zander, and in piano Harriet Serr, Zadel Skolovsky, and Shigeo Neriki.
Efraín Amaya
Efraín Amaya
COMPOSER & CONDUCTOR
AND YOU'LL ALSO ENJOY COLORFUL, SOMETIMES-JOLLY BLENDS OF SEVERAL KINDS OF MUSIC. AMAYA ACKNOWLEDGES THE SUBTLE INFLUENCE OF HIS LATIN-AMERICAN ROOTS.
Gordon Spencer of Pittsburgh Magazine (Aug 2009)
Many times I have been asked how I would describe my music and I have always found it to be very hard to answer. In essence, I consider my music to have a very personal style, and yet it does show affinities with the music of many Latin American composers. The latter is due not only to the fact that we have grown from the same rich musical traditions, but also to a common love for folklore. Venezuelan folklore, my personal case, has many shades. It is the result of three interacting cultures: the Spanish tradition (which was in itself a melting pot), the black tradition brought by the African slaves, and the aboriginal Indian tradition. The first two of these traditions-curiously the two foreign cultures-are also the most explicitly represented in our folklore. Spain, as the colonizing power from which we inherited our language and religion, greatly influenced our folklore by establishing its musical system as the dominant force. Through the Spaniards we knew the harp and the guitar, and adapted those instruments to our local conditions and styles as they began to interact with other traditions. African culture is present in our folklore not only through a wide variety of percussion instruments and rhythms, but also through its manifold social connotations as music is almost inseparable from dance and ritual.
This fusion has left a very colorful and rich musical language, which one can observe in dances such as the joropo, merengue, samba, cumbia, salsa, and many more that sprung out of it. These rhythms are the backbone of my music. I have always been very attracted to modes. In fact one could say that in my music there is a constant confrontation of dissonance and modality.
Efraín Amaya.
