User:German Romero

Germán Romero was born in Mérida, Yucatán, in 1966. He graduated from the Escuela Nacional de Musica at UNAM in Mexico, studying composition with Julio Estrada. He has studied composition with Arturo Márquez (1988), analysis with Mario Lavista at the Conservatorio Nacional (1985-87) and guitar with Federico Bañuelos (1987-89). He was a student at the Taller Nacional de Composición at CENIDIM, studying with Julio Estrada, Federico Ibarra, Mario Lavista, and Daniel Catán. In 1992 and 1998, Romero participated in the guitar workshop at Darmstadt. He was a guest resident faculty at Les Ateliers UPIC in France (1994) and in the Banff Centre for the Arts in Canada (2005), the latter with a grant from the Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Arte. He has had classes with Aurelio León, Aldo Brizzi, Baltazar Benítez, Jörg Herchet, Didier Rocton, Gérard Grisey, Tony Arnold and Helmut Lachenmann, among others.

Romero has received grants and support from FONCA (Jóvenes Creadores, 1996-97 and 2000), from the Coordinación Nacional de Descentralización Zona Sur (1998), from FENCA de Yucatán (Creadores con Trayectoria, 1999), and from CONACULTA-INBA (Educación por el Arte, 2002).

Romero’s Cuarteto de Cuerdas No 3 was selected by the Arditti Quartet to be studied in the Composition and Interpretation Workshop (1999). This work also received honorable mention in the Primer Concurso Nacional de Composición Silvestre Revueltas (2000) and was one of 10 works selected in the 47th International Rostrum of Composers (2000) for their International radio broadcast. In 2000, together with the Yucatan State Government, he produced a CD titled “El Principio.” In 2002, the Radar Festival commissioned “Ramas,” for solo violin, which was premiered and recorded by Irvine Arditti (Mode Records 165CD). His works have been performed by the Ensamble de las Rosas, the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, the Orquesta Sinfónica “Carlos Chavez,” the Orquesta Sinfónica de Aguascalientes, the Arditti Quartet, the Sinfonietta de Morelia, Tambuco, Pablo Gómez, Lourdes Ambriz, Lidia Tamayo, Tony Arnold, Michael Veit, and Mary Hurlburt, among others; in festivals like the Internationales Ferienkurse in Darmstadt (Germany), the Foro Internacional de Música Nueva “Manuel Enríquez,” the Festival Internacional de música de Morelia, the Festival Internacional de Música Contemporánea de Michoacán, the American Festival of Microtonal Music (New York), the Encuentro Latinoamericano de Arpa (Venezuela), the Chicago ICEFest, the Otoño Cultural de Yucatán, Radar Festival, and the Festival Cervantino.

Romero was a founder of the Festival Internacional de Música de Michoacán and was the artistic director of its first three seasons.

Along with his composition career, Germán Romero is dedicated to research and teaching in ear training, a subject that he has taught in diverse higher education settings in Mexico since 1989, such as the Escuela de Perfeccionamiento “Vida y Movimiento”, the Centro Cultural “Ollín Yoliztli,” and the Escuela de Musica Coral de Yucatán. He has lectured and participated in conferences and events regarding ear training such as the Jornadas Académicas sobre la Enseñanza Profesional de la Música (Conservatorio Nacional de Música), the Encuentro Internacional de Educación Musical Monterrey 2003 and 2005, the Programa de Formación en Docencia de la Educación Musical (CENART-IVEC), and the Segundo Foro Latinoamericano de Educación Musical (Mexico). He taught an ear training course at the Escuela Superior de Música de Cataluña. He is the author of Formar el oído, metodología y ejercicios (Conservatorio de las Rosas, 2005), written through an arts education grant from the Centro Nacional de las Artes.

Since 1998, Romero has been a professor of composition and analysis and head of the Ear Training division at the Conservatorio de las Rosas, in Morelia, Michoacán, and was dean of the conservatory from 2004 to 2007.