Bio

Alfredo Cabrera (b.1996) is an accomplished composer, instrumentalist, writer, and activist from Caracas, Venezuela. His music focuses on the deconstruction of his identity as a queer, Latinx immigrant and aims to invite both performers and audiences to reclaim their artistic and perceptive agency as it relates to ourselves and our environment. Cabrera is currently pursuing a DMA in Music Composition at the University of Michigan.

Alfredo started his musical education at age 3 and began playing the violin at age 7. At the age of 8, he was accepted to Escuela Experimental de Música Manuel Alberto Lopez (EEMMAL) in Caracas, Venezuela, where he studied the violin and piano, and completed studies in harmony, music history, counterpoint and aesthetics. In 2013 Cabrera began his work as a composer. He has won multiple awards and recognitions since, including the Artist of the Future Award (El Hatillo municipality, Caracas, 2012 and 2013), 1st place on Lynn University Conservatory of Music Composition Competition (2017), The Marshall Turkin Honors Award (2018 & 2019), and the Brehm Prize in Choral Composition (2020). In 2018, Cabrera reestablished the Lynn University Contemporary Music Ensemble which, under his guide as Artistic Director, became The New Collective, an organization dedicated to the promotion and performance of all forms of 21st-century art. Under Cabrera’s direction between 2018 and 2019, The Collective served as a platform for generating a discussion through art performances and installations of some of the most pressing issues of our time, issues such as racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and climate change.

Some recent works by Cabrera include: Iridescent Porcelain for choir, 4-hand piano, and four soloists (2020 Brehm Prize in Choral Composition,) Paper Homes & Dreams Away for piano trio (Commissioned by Trio Paradigm,) Overcast Moonlight for percussion quartet, spoken word, and electronics (Commissioned by Hohner Porter,) and Rogue Flare, Fly Away for sax quartet (comissioned by the Invictus Duo and the Eros Quartet.) In addition to his work as a composer, Cabrera is passionate about racial equity in music education and has taken an active role in pushing for curricular and pedagogical reform in music academia, including as a panelist at the "Music School for Tomorrow" Symposium hosted by the Alliance for the Transformation of the Musical Academe in partnership with the College Music Society.