This interview is with Distinguished Professor Emeritus Pablo Ortiz of the Music
Department. Professor Ortiz was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied composition at the Universidad Catolica Argentina, with Gerardo Gandini and studied piano with Roberto Caamaño in Buenos Aires and with Angel Soler in Barcelona, Spain. He obtained his Ph.D. from Columbia University in the City of New York focusing on composition, under the guidance of Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Mario Davidovsky.
Professor Ortiz started his academic career at the University of Pittsburgh prior to joining the UC Davis Department of Music in 1994. Deeply influenced by poetry and literature, his vast compositional output includes numerous choral works, works for voice and ensembles of differing sizes, and several operas among many other instrumental works. Ortiz’s successes have earned him numerous commissions, including from the Koussevitzky Foundation, Fromm Foundation, Gerbode Foundation, Terezin Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation and a prestigious Academy Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
As the first Jan and Beta Popper Endowed Professor in Opera at the University of California, Davis, Professor Ortiz re-orchestrated one of his earlier chamber operas Parodia after Monteverdi’s Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda — a tragic tale set during the first crusade.
In 2024, Professor Ortiz’s most recent opera, titled Κασσάνδρα (Kassandra), premiered at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, Argentina as part of a co-production by the Centro de Experimentación del Teatro Colón (CETC) and the Alternative Stage of the Greek National Opera.
Professor Ortiz is interviewed by his long-time friend and colleague, Distinguished Professor Emeritus Christophor Reynolds.
