The inaugural Mizzou New Music Summer Festival will feature the world premieres of new works from eight resident composers selected to be part of the event from a group of more than 120 applicants from around the world. Here’s the first in a series of brief profiles of those composers:

Pianist/composer Francisco Cortes-Alvarez (pictured) was born in Mexico City and received a degree in music composition with honorific mention and the Gabino Barreda Medal from the National School of Music (ENM), National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).

He currently is pursuing  a master’s of music degree in composition at the Jacobs School of Music at Indiana University.

Cortez-Alvarez received two consecutive Susan & Ford Schumann grants to study with Steven Stucky (2005) and George Tsontakis (2006) at the Aspen Musical Festival and School.  He also has participated in workshops with composer Mario Davidovsky and the Cassatt String Quartet, and from 2006 to 2007 served as resident composer for the ONIX Ensemble in Mexico.

His music has been performed in Mexico, the United States, Canada and France by soloists, ensembles and orchestras including the Cassatt String Quartet, Ensamble 3, the Cuarteto Extremo, Tumben Paax, Trio Coghlan, Mexico’s National Symphonic Orchestra, the Aspen Sinfonia Orchestra, the American Academy of Conducting Orchestra, and the Carlos Chávez Young Orchestra.

You can hear a recording of his composition “Lepedpteros” on his MySpace page.