|
The American tenor and composer, Nicholas (Nic) Chuaqui, obtained his Bachelor of Arts degree cum laude in Music and English from Dartmouth College (2008-2012); his Master of Music degree in Music Composition from Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (2014-2016); and his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Music Composition from Eastman School of Music, University of Rocheser (2017-2021), His primary teachers there were Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, David Liptak, and Robert Morris.
Praised for its "sharp and precise imagery," (The Utah Review) the music of Nicolas Chuaqui has been recognized for its interest and imagination. Most recently, he was a winner of the 2020 Ortus International New Music Competition, as well as one of four finalists for the 2020 ASCAP/SEAMUS (Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US) Student Commissioning Prize.
His acoustic music has been heard at many of the country's prominent showcases for young composers, such as June in Buffalo, and has been performed by such well-recognized ensembles as the Arditti Quartet, Ensemble Signal, OSSIA New Music, and The Crossing. His music incorporating electronic media has been featured at several notable venues, such as the International Computer Music Conference, New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival, and Diffrazioni Multimedia Festival (Florence, Italy). His vocal and operatic music has been awarded by various organizations, and his first opera, The Forest of Dreams, was premiered in a fully-staged production by New Voices Opera (Bloomington, Indiana) in 2016.
His music is greatly inspired by the relationships between musical memory, time, and impression. A specific image or moment is often the starting point, as it is in his recent song cycle Apocalyptic Visions (2018), winner of the Bernard Rogers Prize: in the third song, for example, the resonances and constituent parts of this "vision" swirl around one another, creating something both familiar and unfamiliar at once. His music is also frequently in dialogue with the past; Qui Confidunt in Domino (2016), for instance, reimagines a Gregorian chant (one he grew up singing) into a sonic landscape of ebbing and flowing. Other works, however, such as Toxic Wind (2017), commissioned by NOVA Chamber Music Series and premiered by Utah Symphony brass players, eschew familiar sounds and attempt to build a world from the ground up.
In addition to composition, Nicholas Chuaqui is active as a performer, and his improvisatory compositional process draws on a lifetime of experience. As a child, he attended one of the only full-time coeducational choir schools in the USA. He continued singing as an undergraduate student, although he shifted stylistically into being Musical Director of the pop-cover acapella group The Dartmouth Aires (Runners-up on Season 3 of NBC's "The Sing-Off"). Continuing to perform as both vocalist and pianist, he has premiered numerous student works, as well as made solo appearances as a tenor in John Gibson's In Flight (2016) and in many classic works such as J.S. Bach's Ascension Oratorio BWV 11. He has also directed vocal and instrumental ensembles in performances of his own music.
Nicolas Chuaqui taught Music Theory (August 2017-May 2020) and Music Composition (August 2019-May 2020) and organized new music concerts as a graduate assistant at Eastman School of Music. He has taught Composition and Theory at the University of Wyoming (since August 2021). He is married to Alice Chuaqui Baldwin (since June 18, 2016) and currently lives in Lives in Montclair, New Jersey |
