Recording Artist: Leo Brouwer

Leo Brouwer is the grandson of Cuban composer Ernestina Lecuona y Casado and the great-nephew of composer Ernesto Lecuona. As a child, Brouwer received his initial stimulus from his father, a physician, who was an aficionado of Villa-Lobos, Tárrega and Granados. He initiated his son encouraging him to play these composers’ works, mostly by ear.

Young Brouwer received his first formal guitar instruction from the noted Cuban guitarist and pedagogue Isaac Nicola, in turn a disciple of Emilio Pujol. Afterwards, Brouwer went to the United States to study music at the Hartt College of Music of the University of Hartford, and later at the Juilliard School, where he studied under Vincent Persichetti and took composition classes with Stefan Wolpe.

In 1970 Brouwer played in the premiere of ‘El Cimarrón’ by Hans Werner Henze in Berlin. Together with Morton Feldman, he was awarded a 1972 scholarship by the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) being guest composer and lecturer of Academy of Science and Arts of Berlin. In Germany Brouwer also recorded a number of LPs for Deutsche Grammophon.

Brouwer’s playing career ended in the early 1980s due to an injury to a tendon in his right hand middle finger.

His early works show the influence of Cuban folk music, but during the 1960s and 70s, he became interested in the music of modernist composers such as Luigi Nono and Iannis Xenakis, using indeterminacy in works such as Sonograma I. Other works from this period include the guitar pieces ‘Canticum’ (1968), ‘La espiral eterna’ (1971), ‘Parábola’ (1973) and ‘Tarantos’ (1974). More recently, Brouwer’s works have started leaning towards tonality and modality. The solo guitar works ‘El Decamerón Negro’ (1981) the ‘Sonata’ (1990; for Julian Bream) and ‘Paisaje cubano con campanas’ (1986) exemplify this tendency.

Among his works are a large number of solo guitar pieces, several guitar concertos and over forty film scores. Leo Brouwer is involved in the Concurso y Festival Internacional de Guitarra de la Habana (International Guitar Festival of the Havana). He travels often to attend guitar festivals throughout the world, and especially to other Latin American countries.

Brouwer is best known for his performances and compositions of modern music. He has performed and recorded works by Sylvano Bussotti, Hans Werner Henze, Maurice Ohana, Cristóbal Halffter, Leni Alexander, Cornelius Cardew, and Heitor Villa-Lobos amongst many others.