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Sergio Cervetti's versatile music ranges from instrumental and
vocal works to electronic soundtracks that often reflect his
South American, French and Italian heritage. His vocabulary
draws from an early brush with twelve-tone and minimalism while
his current approach is flexible, free and tailors each work
regardless of trends or movements that are frequently fused.
His style, often woven with melody, is described as deftly
blending folk elements, European tradition and minimalist
aesthetics.
Born in Uruguay and a U.S. citizen since 1979, Cervetti
graduated from Peabody Conservatory after studying under
scholarship with Ernst Krenek and Stefan Grove. He went on to
win the Caracas Festival chamber prize (Five Episodes) and was
subsequently invited by the DAAD to be composer-in-residence in
Berlin in 1969.
After taking residence in New York City in 1970 he taught at
Brooklyn College, worked for Virgil Thomson, and studied
electronic music with Vladimir Ussachevsky and Alcides Lanza at
Columbia University. The Hay Wain, inspired by the Bosch
triptych, established his reputation as a composer of electronic
music. Selections are used in Oliver Stone's film, Natural Born
Killers.
Cervetti joined the faculty of New York University's Tisch
School of the Arts in 1972 where he taught until 1997 and
returned to guest in 2007-08. He helped to develop a curriculum
of music history, composition, choreography and set up the
Theater Program's sound studio. His long association with the
dance world includes numerous works-notably 40 Second/42nd
Variations and Bessie-awarded Wind Devil-presented by Dance
Theater Workshop, Jacob's Pillow, La Mama, the Joyce, Ballet
Hispanico, Sundance, Kennedy Center, Walker Arts Center, Lincoln
Center and three Next Wave Festivals at the Brooklyn Academy of
Music.
Among noted early works are Guitar Music (the bottom of the
iceberg) and ...from the earth... conceived as a controlled
improvisation for sustaining instruments that borrows five notes
from Mahler's Das Lied Von Der Erde. For WNYC Radio's 50th
Anniversary Concert, Cervetti was among noted composers who set
John Ashbery's poem, No Longer Very Clear. His music's
emotional reach resonates in The Triumph of Death, a song cycle
for soprano and piano to poetry by Circe Maia, and rhythmically
in Candombe II. It is the orchestration of Candombe for
harpsichord that pays homage to a national dance of African
origins from his native Uruguay.
Elegy For A Prince, his first opera, was premiered in excerpt by
New York City Opera at VOX 2007. It is freely adapted from
Oscar Wilde's The Happy Prince with a libretto by Elizabeth
Esris, and was featured on the PBS39 program, Tempo. An
animation of a duet between the principal characters is on
YouTube. YUM!, a chamber opera about food and friendship, is
the second Cervetti-Esris collaboration.
A CD of electronic works, Visual Diary/The Mouth of Boredom that
showcase Cervetti's signature style, was released in 2009. The
Mouth of Boredom is inspired by Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal.
Visual Diary is a soundtrack to a film by Valerie Sonnenthal
made from 27,000 photographs. A section is on YouTube.
In October 2009 Navona Records released Destinations, Orchestral
Works from Latin American Composers. It features Chaconne for
the Martyrdom of Atahualpa for harpsichord and chamber orchestra
which was praised at its premiere as "an impressive and
seductive work that defies any classification." A sampling of
these works aired on WRTI's program, Crossover, in February 2010
during Jill Pasternak's in-depth radio interview.
Cervetti resides in Bucks County, PA where he teaches privately
and consults. Currently he is writing Some Realms I Owned, a
commissioned work for piano, and sketching The Blaze Keeper, a
cantata for baritone, strings, percussion and electronic sounds
based on The Grand Inquisitor from The Brothers Karamazov by
Dostoyevsky. Madrigal III, a work from 1976 for two sopranos
and chamber ensemble with a 15th century Aztec text, is
scheduled to be recorded in autumn 2010.
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