Alejandro Escuer
About this Artist
Alejandro Escuer is a Mexican flutist, composer, improviser and multidisciplinary artist. A virtuoso on extended flute techniques and how to use them artistically, Alejandro Escuer is a driving force for the consolidation of new music in Mexico and Latin America. He has been the artistic director and producer of hundreds of concerts and has commissioned and premiered more than 250 works dedicated to him and written for flute and various combinations such as electronics, ensemble, and percussion. He has served as music ambassador for Mexico in countries including Japan, the U.S., Canada, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, France, China, Poland, Italy, Denmark, Austria, Colombia, Venezuela, and Costa Rica.
In 2004, he started a Pan-American flute and orchestra commissioning project, renewing the flute concerto repertoire by adding new pieces, including music by Arturo Márquez, Gabriela Ortiz, Enrico Chapela, David Dzubay, Michael Matthews, and Francisco Cortés-Álvarez, and appearing as a soloist with leading orchestras in Latin America. He founded the well-known and acclaimed Ónix Ensemble in 1996 and the first multidisciplinary project for flute, electronics, and video in 2000.
Escuer has received numerous prizes and awards, including two Rockefeller Foundation awards; a National Association for Latino Arts and Cultures (NALAC) award in 2012, for his project on migration and its social impact at the Mexico-U.S. border; and more than a dozen awards granted by Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes, including the Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. He is also a tenured faculty member at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México(UNAM) and President of the Academia de Música Contemporánea.
Escuer holds degrees from the Conservatorio Nacional de Música (B.A.), UNAM (B.A.), a master’s degree from the Sweelinck Conservatorium Amsterdam (Uitvoerend Musicus), and a doctorate from New York University. As a soloist, chamber musician, and composer, he has recorded some two dozen albums, many of them on the Urtext Digital Classics and Naxos labels.