Biography

Jorge Martín-Buján was born in Cuba in 1959 and has lived in the United States since 1965. He holds degrees from Yale College and Columbia University. He writes in a variety of genres with his music seeing commissions and performances by all kinds of artists and groups across world.

In 2020 Martín-Buján was honored by a consortium of El Paso’s leading cultural institutions with a commission to write a 40-minute work for large orchestra, chorus and soloists to commemorate the dead from the Walmart shooting in 2019: The El Paso Requiem. The El Paso Symphony Orchestra went on to perform the requiem twice in fall 2021. The Fort Worth Opera Festival presented the World Premiere of Martín’s first full-length large-scale opera, Before Night Falls, in the spring of 2010 with Florida Grand Opera reviving the production in 2017. The world premiere audio recording of the opera appears on the Albany Records label and is available on Spotify, Apple Music, and CD. Opera Southwest is mounting a new production and reduced orchestration by the composer set to premiere in March 2024.

Other operas include his one-act opera Tobermory, which won first prize in 1993 in the National Opera Association’s Fifth Biennial Chamber Opera Competition and has been performed regularly since all across the U.S. Beast and Superbeast, a full-length set of four one-act operas based on Saki’s short stories with libretti by Andrew Joffe, was presented in March 1996 in Washington D.C. (Bethesda) by The Other Opera Company and in June 1996 in New York by the American Chamber Opera Company to critical acclaim.

Beyond opera, The Vermont Symphony Orchestra commissioned the instrumental work Romance from Martín-Buján for its “Made In Vermont” tour of ten towns throughout the state in the fall of 1999; the orchestra revived the work in an expanded orchestration to celebrate its 75th anniversary in 2009. His chambers works have also been programmed in many European festivals as well as throughout the U.S. His tour-de-force 65-minute song cycle with poetry by Andrew Hudgins, The Glass Hammer, was recorded by the legendary American baritone Sanford Sylvan with pianist David Breitman. The duo premiered the cycle during a tour in 2000 that culminated in a Carnegie Hall performance in May of that year at the Weill Recital Hall. Their studio recording of the work was recorded on the Koch International Classics label and can be heard on Spotify and Apple Music. Since its premiere, The Glass Hammer has since been taken up by a handful of brilliant young artists such as Jonathan Hays with Craig Ketter and, most recently, Robert Wesley Mason with Sarah Thune.

Mr. Martín-Buján has been recognized by numerous organizations throughout his career with fellowships and prizes. In 2001 he was one of the featured composers in New York City Opera’s “Vox: Showcasing American Composers,” in addition to receiving the generous Cintas Foundation Fellowship for Creative Artists of Cuban Descent in both 1999 and 2012. The American Academy of Arts and Letters presented Jorge with the Academy Award in Music in 1998 the Bogliasco Foundation in Genoa awarded him a fellowship in 1998, and Yaddo in Saratoga Springs hosted him for artist residencies in 1993 and 2003. Also, Concert Artists Guild, Close Encounters With Music and the Vermont Contemporary Music Ensemble have been among the many who have commissioned his music.

Mr. Martín-Buján is a member of A.S.C.A.P and has numerous other commercial recordings available. For more information, get in touch here.

Awards

  • 2012 Cintas Foundation, the Brandon Fradd Fellowship in Music Composition (second fellowship, lifetime limit of two)

  • 2011 Alice M. Ditson grant toward the recording of the complete cello works, released July 2011 by Albany records

  • 2005 National Endowment for the Arts, $10,000 challenge grant to American Opera Projects for development of the opera Before Night Falls

  • 2005 Residency at the Bogliasco Foundation, Ligurian Study Center, Italy

  • 2003-4 Residency at Yaddo

  • 1999 Cintas Foundation Fellowship in Music Composition

  • 1999 The American Music Center's Margaret Fairbank Jory Copying Assistance Grant for "Romance"

  • 1998 Academy Award in Music from the American Academy of Arts and Letters

  • 1997-present ASCAP Standard Music Award

  • 1994 Meet the Composer grant for Tobermory

  • 1993 Residency at Yaddo, an artists' colony

  • 1992 First Place Winner, National OperaAssociation's 5th Biennial Chamber Opera Competition, for Tobermory

  • 1985 Meet the Composer grant for "That Lonesome Valley"