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Music Professor Emeritus Aurelio de la Vega to Receive Lifetime Achievement Award

Cal State Northridge music professor emeritus Aurelio de la Vega, an internationally recognized composer, will be honored by the Cintas Foundation with the 2009 William B. Warren Lifetime Achievement Award in Music Composition.

De la Vega is expected to receive the honor, which recognizes the work of artists of Cuban lineage who reside outside of Cuba, during a special ceremony in Miami, Fla., next week.

Aurelio de la Vega

“It is so very nice to be recognized for a lifetime of work, especially when it comes from a foundation geared to Cubans and the descendants of Cubans,” de la Vega said.

De la Vega was born in Havana in 1925 and studied law at the University of Havana and music composition at the Conservatario Ada  Iglesias and, independently, with Fritz Kramer in Havana and Ernst Toch in Los Angeles. He served as a cultural attaché at the Cuban Consulate in Los Angeles. He also toured the United States as a lecturer from 1952 to 1954 before settling in Los Angeles. De la Vega joined the faculty of what was then San Fernando Valley State College, now California State University, Northridge, in 1959.

Throughout his teaching years and in the years since his retirement in 1993, de la Vega has been an active composer and music lecturer. His list of compositions includes symphonic pieces, chamber music works, solo instrumental pieces, vocal works, piano, guitar and ballet music and electronic compositions. Major orchestras and prominent soloists throughout the world have performed his works.

The composer has been the recipient of many prizes and distinctions, including having twice received the Friedheim Award of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Last year, de la Vega was nominated for a Latin Grammy.

In 2000, de la Vega was honored by the Library of Congress when his graphic score, “The Magic Labyrinth,” was included in the library’s 733-page volume, “Music History from Primary Sources.” Among the music greats included with him were Bartók, Beethoven, Brahms, Chopin, Gershwin, Handel, Liszt, Mahler, Mendelssohn, Mozart, Puccini, Stravinsky and Verdi.

“As one of the best known Cuban composers of his generation, Aurelio de la Vega offers a dramatic, intense and expressive music style,” said Hortensia E. Sampedro, president of the Cintas Foundation, in announcing the award.

De la Vega is not resting on his music laurels. He is currently working on a new piece to be performed in New York in 2010 by the North/South Chamber Orchestra.

Within the next few weeks, North/South Records of New York will release a CD with recordings of four pieces by de la Vega, “Elegy,” “Tropimapal,” “Variación del Recuerdo,” and “Adiós,” a work he wrote originally for the Los Angeles Philharmonic on a commission by Zubin Mehta. The works are played by the internationally renowned National Polish Radio Symphony Orchestra and The North/South Consonance ensemble.

“I may be retired from academic life, but the music never stops,” said de la Vega.

The Cintas Foundation was established with funds from the estate of the late Oscar B. Cintas, a former Cuban ambassador to the United States and a prominent industrialist and patron of the arts. Cintas Fellowships acknowledge demonstrated creative accomplishments and encourage the development of creative artists in architecture, literature, music composition, and the visual arts. Past recipients include Pulitzer-Prize winning novelist Oscar Hijuelos, playwright Maria Irene Fornes, painter Carlos Alfonzo, photographer Andres Serrano, architect Andres Martin Duany, sculptor Maria Elena Gonzales, and composer Orlando Garcia

California State University, Northridge is celebrating “50 years of life-changing opportunity” this year. The university has more than 36,000 full- and part-time students and offers 64 bachelor’s and 50 master’s degrees as well as 28 teaching credential programs. Founded in 1958, CSUN is among the largest single-campus universities in the nation and the only four-year public university in the San Fernando Valley. The university serves as the intellectual, economic and cultural heart of the Valley and beyond.