Arcángel Castillo Olivari

Works for Cello

Passacaglia y fuga modal (1989), for cello and viola.

Works for Viola

Passacaglia y fuga modal (1989), for cello and viola.

Sources:

International Society for Contemporary Music: https://member.iscm.org/catalogue/composers/castillo-olivari-arcangel

The Living Composers Project: http://www.composers21.com/compdocs/olivaria.htm

Furman Schleifer, M., and Galván, G (2016). Latin American Classical Composers, A Biographical Dictionary. London: Rowman & Littlefield.

Arcángel Castillo Olivari

Venezuelan composer and conductor, born in 1959.

Castillo Olivari was born in Mérida, Venezuela in 1959. An influential composer and conductor, Castillo Olivari has a wide range of orchestral, chamber, and electroacoustic works. He earned his BM in composition studying composition and conducting under Alfredo Rugeles at the Instituto Universitario de Estudios Musicales in Caracas; he then studied composition at the University of Cincinatti’s Conservatory of Music with Joel Hoffman and Ricardo Zohn-Muldoon, and computer music with Mara Helmuth. There, he earned his Master’s in Composition on a Fullbright scholarship.

Winning first prize in the chamber music competition for the Asociación Cultural por la Música de Cámara, Castillo Oliveri also received honorable mention from the Consejo Nacional de la Cultura for his Five Songs.

Along with having a talent for composing, Castillo Oliveri was also director of Unidad Educativa Institutos Educacionales Asociados in Caracas and assistant children’s chorus director at the Orquesta Nacional Juvenil de Venezuela. He was also assistant director of Cantoría de Mérida from 1979 to 1983. Later on, Castillo Oliveri became the director of the audiovisual archive at the Biblioteca Nacional de Venezuela in Caracas, and he conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado Mérida and Orquestra Juvenil Nacional of Mérida. Castillo Olivari is currently a teacher of composition at the Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela.