Argentina Argentine Composer Gerardo Gandini Dies (JSJ)
Argentine composer, conductor and pianist Gerardo Gandini died on March 22 at the age of 77 years.
Gandini, who was born in Buenos Aires on October 16, 1936, was a central figure, and leader of the avant garde, in contemporary Argentine music, according to a Teatro Colón notice.
He studied composition with Alberto Ginastera and later with Goffredo Petrassi at the Academy of Santa Cecilia in Rome. He studied piano under Pía Sebastiani, Roberto Caamaño and Yvonne Loriod.
He composed more than 120 works including symphonic works, chamber music, film soundtracks, and in particular music for solo instruments including the piano.
Among his operas, including La casa sin sosiego (The restless house, 1992) and Liederkreis (about Schumann, 2000), his La ciudad ausente (The absent city), premiered in the Teatro Colón in 1995, was also finally premiered, to his evident delight, in the Teatro Argentino in La Plata in 2011.
He was also long involved in education and training activities at the Juilliard School of Music in New York and the Instituto Di Tella (Buenos Aires) and the Conservatory of La Plata, among other local institutions.
Gandini was interred in the pantheon of the Argentine society of writers and composers of music (SADAIC) in the Chacarita cemetery in Buenos Aires.
Jonathan Spencer Jones
Gerardo Gandini (Photo Teatro Colón)