2023 Resident Composer Spotlight: Santiago Beis

Santiago Beis is one of eight Resident Composers selected for the 2023 Mizzou International Composers Festival from among 500 applicants, 28% of which are from outside the USA, representing 49 countries. 

Beis is an Uru-Brazilian composer, pianist, audio designer, arranger, and artistic researcher.

Santiago Beis

He holds a Bachelor’s degree in composition with Maurício Dottori, Harry Crowl, Márcio Steuernagel, and Felipe de Almeida Ribeiro at Escola de Música e Belas Artes do Paraná – UNESPAR. While there, he worked with new music ensembles such as Orquestra de Câmara da Cidade de Curitiba, Ensemble Nova Camerata, Ensemble Móbile, Quarteto Brasiliana, UM2UO Percussion, Orquestra filarmônica da UFPR, Orquestra de Câmara da Cidade de Curitiba, Orquestra à Base de Sopro de Curitiba, Orquestra à Base de Cordas de Curitiba, and Quinteto Sopro5.

He won first prize in XXII Funarte Prémio de Composição Clássica (2017), and in IV Bienal Música Hoje (2017) composition festivals and played his compositions in MadeinNY JazzGala jazz competition at the Tribeca Center of Performing Arts in New York (2017).

Recent works include the Ballet Concert Águas do éden e do Hades. As a producer with Composteira casa de Criação, he organized workshops for composers-in-residence including Marcos Balter, Paulo Rios Filho, Alex Buck, Alexandre Torres Porres, Flora Holderbaum, Marin Herraiz, Guilherme Pelucci and Daniela Veronesi, Mariana Carvalho, Fernando Riederer, Mossa Bildner, and Jorge Antunes, among other Brazilian Artists.

Beis is a 2023 graduate of the M.M. in Composition program at the School of Music of the University of Missouri, Columbia, where he was mentored by Carolina Heredia, Yoshiaki Onishi, and Stefan Freund. He is taking part in current new music festivals and residencies in collaboration with ensembles such as Left Coast Chamber Ensemble through the 2021 RedNote New Music Festival, the UM University Philharmonic for the Sinquefield Composition Prize and by the Sheldon Arts Foundation.

For the MICF, Beis is presenting Color Utterance, which will be performed on Saturday, July 29 at 7:30 pm at the Missouri Theater. The concert will feature Alarm Will Sound playing world premiere performances by Resident Composers. 

You can hear samples of his music on his website.