Location: Contact event organizer
Presenting District: Central Oregon
Presenter: Dr. Ricardo de la Torre, NCTM

Program Description: Mexican composers have produced a wealth of piano music of pedagogical value. This lecture will offer a panorama of elementary to late intermediate teaching repertoire by Mexican composers from the 19th to the 21st centuries, discuss its main characteristics and performance tradition, and provide information about its availability in the U.S..

Presenter Bio: In demand as a performer, teacher, adjudicator and presenter, Dr. Ricardo de la Torre currently serves as piano instructor for the Community Music Program at the University of Puget Sound, where he was also staff accompanist for the School of Music. Ricardo has played in concert venues in Mexico, the United States, Canada, Spain, Austria, and France. A finalist and prize winner in several competitions in Mexico and the U.S., he received second prize at the Eleventh Annual Competition in the Performance of Music from Spain and Latin America, sponsored by Indiana University’s Latin American Music Center and the Embassy of Spain. The recordings he made as a result of this competition were included in a two-CD collection released by the LAMC.

Together with his wife, Dr. Lark Powers, Ricardo forms a piano duo that has performed internationally, was a finalist of the United States International Piano Duo Competition in Colorado Springs and received a Silver Award at the first international competition of the Carles & Sofía Foundation of Spain.

Born in Mexico City, Ricardo attended Escuela Superior de Música in his hometown, where he received a Bachelor’s degree cum laude. He continued his studies at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he received a Master of Music degree and went on to graduating with a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Colorado Boulder, where he worked as a teaching assistant. An active presenter, he has participated in numerous local, regional, national, and international conferences and the results of his research have been published in specialized journals in the U.S., Mexico and Colombia. He is a visiting artist for the Washington State Music Teachers Association’s Music Artistry Program and has served on the faculties of Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, and East Central University in Ada, OK. After being pianist at First Lutheran Church in Tacoma and directing its summer concert series Listen Live at Lunch, Ricardo currently works as Curator of Art and Music at Lakewold Gardens in Lakewood, WA.