The music of Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez has been described by the press as "vigorously organized and highly visceral...neither eclectic nor post-modern nor owing allegiance to any passing fashion".
Born in Mexico City in 1964, he grew up in Guadalajara, and later studied at the Peabody Conservatory, Yale University, Princeton, and Tanglewood under Henri Dutilleux, Jacob Druckman, and Martin Bresnick. He is currently Associate Professor of Composition at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, New York.
Among the many awards he has received are a Finalist Prize at the 2004 Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestral Composer Competition, as well as the 2003 Lee Ettelson Composition Award. He has also been honored in recent years with fellowships from the Guggenheim, Fromm, Rockefeller, and Camargo Foundations; was the 2000-01 American Academy of Arts and Letters Charles Ives Fellow; and has received two B.M.I composition awards, the Mozart Medal from the governments of Mexico and Austria, and a Fulbright Fellowship. Sanchez-Gutierrez is a member of Mexico's prestigious Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte and was named Person of the Year 2000 by the Mexican daily Público. His work is performed and recorded frequently in the U.S, Latin America, Europe and Asia.
Among Dr. Sanchez-Gutierrez's recently completed works are Cinco Piezas para Orquesta (an Instrumenta, A.C./Hopkins Symphony commission); Twittering Machines (a U.S./Mexico Fund for Culture commission); Just Look, a chamber opera commissioned by Munich's A/Devantgarde Festival, Cinco para Cuatro (a National Fine Arts Institute of Mexico commission for the Cuarteto Latinoamericano); Clyde Beatty is Dead (a Fromm Foundation at Harvard commission); De Kooning Movements (Kobe Shinbun Arts Foundation for Japanese marimba virtuoso Makoto Nakura); Of Gold (Meet the Composer for Chanticleer); Desde el Son (National Fund for the Arts); Afterlight (A.S.C.A.P./the American Symphony Orchestra League for the Boston Modern Orchestra Project); Luciérnagas (Carnegie Hall Co. for Eighth Blackbird); The Ocean Calls, (a scenic work based on Neruda's poetry to be produced by Japan's NHK); Snapshot:Waves for New York's Elements Quartet and El Mozote, an evening-long collaborative work with French coreographer Pascal Rioult, Argentinean director Susana Tubert and the U.S.-based Core Ensemble (Barlow Endowment/Cary Foundation.)