MIGUEL VILLAFRUELA was born in Holguín, Cuba, in 1955. He graduated as Interpreter and Professor of Saxophone, from the Escuela Nacional de Música of Cuba, in 1976. He won in 1982 the Premier Prix de Saxophone at the Conservatoire National Superieur de Musique de Paris, in Daniel Deffayet's class. Villafruela has toured extensively around the world performing as soloist with orchestras or in recitals. He has appeared with the National symphony orchestras of Chile, Montevideo, Buenos Aires, Bogotá, Prague, Gulbenkian (Lisbon) and the Slovakian Chamber Orchestra among many others; and has performed in Montreal, Quebec City, Caracas, Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires, Tokyo, Berlin, Madrid, Cochabamba, Valencia, Helsinki, Managua, Sofia, Salle Cortot de Paris, Annecy, Warsaw, Krakow, Mexico, Lisbon, Vilnius, Riga, Budapest, Brussels, and other cities of the Americas, Europe and Asia.. He has also appeared at numerous international festivals such as the Bourges Electroacoustic Music Festival and World Saxophone Congresses in Nuremberg (1982), Maryland (1985), Tokyo (1988), and Valencia (1997) as well as at Saxophonies (Angers, France, 1990), in celebration of 150th anniversary of the saxophone. His repertoire includes the most significant works for saxophone and orchestra, saxophone and electroacoustics, and saxophone with piano or diverse instruments. He is a specialist in contemporary music and has commissioned numerous Latin-American composers while others have dedicated their works to him. In addition to his work as soloist, he founded in 1997 the Quatuor Villafruela, with three of his most advanced students from the University of Chile. Villafruela's recordings have obtained in Cuba the PRIX EGREM (1986 and 1994). Several of his titles are devoted to Latin-American music with works created for him or his quatuor Saxophones por América (1993), Saxofón en Concierto. Compositores Chilenos (2000), Saxophones en Latinoamérica (2000) and Secuencias (2001). In 1982 Villafruela founded the saxophone faculty at the Instituto Superior de Artes of Cuba, where he taught until 1993. By invitation of the University of Chile Music Department he founded in 1994 the first higher education Saxophone Faculty in this country. At present he is Titular Professor at the Arts Faculty of the University of Chile. Villafruela has taught clinics for Vandoren, Selmer and BG in Argentine and Chile and he is frequently invited to give Master Classes in music institutions. Villafruela has received numerous awards, among others at the International Rostrum of Young Interpreters (Bratislava, 1979), the Leopold Bellan Contest (1980), the Pyongyant Festival (1990), the National Order of Culture in Cuba (1986) and of the Chilian's Society of Composers in 2001.
My artistics projects:
My Favorite Web Sites
Académicos. Universidad de Chile
Artistas Vandoren
Revista Eldorado
Musicología. Universidad de Chile
