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Louis Aguirre (1968) is a Cuban composer resident in Denmark. Aguirre was educated as a composer, violinist and conductor at the University of Arts in Havana, Cuba, under the guidance of Harold Gramatges and Roberto Valera . When he was 27 years old, he became the artistic director and chief conductor of the Symphony Orchestra in his birth town, Camagüey, as well as guest conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra and the Santiago de Cuba Symphony Orchestra. He also was a professor at the Camagüey’s Music Conservatory and artistic director and chairman of the International Festival of Contemporary Music (1996-2002) in Camagüey.

Louis Aguirre is an award-winning composer whose music has been labelled as “Music from hell” and “Not for the faint of heart”.

Louis Aguirre is one of the foremost Latin American composers of his generation.

In the early 2000s Louis Aguirre moved to Amsterdam, where he studied from 2002-2004 composition at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam on the line of "Contemporary music through non-Western Techniques" with Professor Rafael Reina and Jos Swaanenburg. And from 2004 he has been living in Denmark, where he completed the soloist class in composition at the Århus Music Conservatory in 2007 under the guidance of Karl Aage Rasmussen and Hans Abrahamsen.

Aguirre is a strong and original voice in Danish music life, which helps to make Danish music life more varied and faceted. A number of his works are inspired by the Cuban Santeria religion and its religious texts.

Working as a full-time composer since 2002, his work list, with more than 170 works, includes: operas, orchestral and chamber music, solo works, vocal music, choral, electronic and didactic music.

In recent years, Louis Aguirre has become a much-played composer, and his works have been performed at numerous music festivals and acclaimed by soloists an ensembles throughout most of the world such as: Ere Lievonen, Enric Monfort, Adam Ørvad, Carlos Gálvez, Juanjo Guillem, Mikkel Andersen, Mina Fred, Henriette Jensen, Barbara Lueneburg, Pilar Fontalba, Karolina Leedo, David Hildebrandt; Axyz Ensemble, Arbós Trío, Snow Mask Ensemble, Kimbala Percussion Group, DuoMetrie, Shadanga Duo; Verso Duo, Athelas Sinfonietta Copenhagen; Ekkozone Ensemble, Havana Symphony Orchestra, Santiago Symphony Orchestra, Camagüey Symphony Orchestra, the Arditti Quartet, TANA String Quartet, Residencias Ensemble, Neopercusión and Colectivo Neo, JONDE Orchestra; and venues and festivals in Europe, China, the USA and South and Latin America, such as the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt, Germany; SUSÅ Contemporary Music Festival, Denmark; Granada Festival Internacional de Música y Danza, Spain; Liubliana Festival, Slovenia; Summartónar, Faroe Islands; Wien Modern, Austria; Ultraschall, Berlin, Südseite nachts, Stuttgart, Germnay; Klang Festival, Denmark; Nordic Music Days, Finland; GuFeng International Percussion Festival, Hainan, China; Festival Internacional de Musica de Morelia, México; Festival SOXXI, Valencia, Spain; OpenDays Festival, Denmark; Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, Paris; Australian Percussion Gathering 2016, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University; Istambul Woodwind Festival, Caddebostan Culture Center, Istambul, Turkey; Forum für Neue Musik der Christianskirche, Hamburg; Festival Saint-Denis, Paris; and Amsterdam Gaudeamus Week, Netherlands...

Aguirre has received numerous awards for his music such as:
2011- Winner (1st prize) of the 2011 Martirano Award, University of Illinois, USA.
2013-  A short film with Aguirre’s music, and directed by Russian film maker Maria Yaborska was finalist at the Cannes Film Festival.
2014 - 2016 Composer in residence of Neopercusión & Colectivo Neo, Madrid, Spain.
2015- Awarded the prestigious 3 Years Grant by the Danish State Arts Council.
2019- Awarded the prestigious Cintas-Brandon Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition, USA.

He is an active part of the music scene in Denmark and North Jutland by working as a member of the composers group Snow Mask and as artistic director of the Snow Mask Ensemble.

“Louis Aguirre is a strongly individual composer with an unusual spiritual background in Afro-Cuban religion. One of the foremost contemporary Cuban composers of today, widely performed and commissioned internationally, the music of Louis Aguirre strikes one with a tremendous blow. It has the power of an exorcism, brutal and impenetrable, and requires the utmost of performers and their instruments. His music is a strange marriage of modernism with the mysteries of the Afro-Cuban Santería religion. Extreme sonorities, irascible micro-tonal melodic designs, frantic sound blocks, complex micro-rhythmic relationships and a wide range of unconventional timbral effects are some of the components that articulate the exuberant language of Aguirre's work. ”- Dr. Iván César Morales Flores, Professor of Music at the University of Oviedo, Spain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJ0CNwdzlPs