Cirilo Vila

Cirilo Vila was born in Santiago de Chile in 1937. He began his musical studies at age seven years at the National Conservatory of Music, University of Chile. In 1957 he won the Orrego Carvallo Award and in 1959 received a BA in Music Performance with a major in piano, with the highest mark. In parallel he learned composition with Alfonso Letelier (1954-1958) and Gustavo Becerra-Schmidt (1960-1961). In the early '60s, thanks to a grant from the Italian government he traveled to Rome to study conducting at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia with Prof. Franco Ferrara. He continued his training with Prof. Pierre Dervaux (2) at the Ecole Normale de Paris. Between 1964 and 1969 took private lessons in music composition with Prof. Max Deutsch. Since his return from Europe to Chile in 1970, he became a prominent teacher, creating generations of composers and musicians. Among his works are "Sequence" (1964), "Canto" (1968), "Navigator" (1976), "Tonada the passer" (1980), "I remember the sea" (1984) and "Germinal" (1989), writing throughout his career scores for theater, film, orchestra, choir, instrumental ensembles, soloists, and songs. In 2004 he won the Chilean National Musical Arts Award.