biography

Composer, vocalist, writer, and producer Patrick Castillo has garnered the esteem of musicians, audiences, and leading arts figures throughout the classical music community. His accomplishments as a composer have been recognized by numerous commissions and awards including the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts. He has also been the recipient of the Brian M. Israel Prize, awarded by the Society for New Music for his chamber work Lola.

The 2006-07 concert season featured the world premieres of Evocation for chorus and cello by the Manhattan Choral Ensemble and Cirque for solo violin by New World Symphony violinist Piotr Szewczyk. Other recent highlights include premiere performances of Patrick Castillo’s chamber works by Anti-Social Music (New York), the Interlochen Chamber Players (Interlochen, MI), the Society for New Music (Syracuse, NY), and the Pharos Music Project (New York).

A number of recent commissions have established Patrick Castillo as an important figure in New York’s contemporary vocal music community. The 2005-06 season saw the premiere of Two Songs for Christmas Eve, commissioned by the Canticum Novum Singers and representing the first commission awarded in that ensemble’s 33-year history. In addition, the Manhattan Choral Ensemble selected Patrick Castillo as one of three composers for its 2006 New Music for New York commissioning project. The resultant work, A Piece of Coffee, met with enthusiastic acclaim and led to the MCE’s commission of Evocation the following season. Patrick Castillo’s choral music has also been performed in recent seasons by the Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble and the New York Virtuoso Singers. Highlights of the 2007-08 season include the world premiere of This is the hour of lead for baritone/countertenor and chamber ensemble, commissioned by New York City vocal artist Phillip Cheah.

In 2005, with composers Martha Sullivan and James Blachly, Patrick Castillo founded the Pharos Music Project, a collective of composers and performers dedicated to the presentation of new vocal and chamber music. Patrick Castillo also serves concurrently as Artistic Administrator for ArtistLed, classical music's first musician-directed, Internet-based recording company, and Music@Menlo, a chamber music festival and institute in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this latter capacity, Patrick Castillo has authored, narrated, and produced the widely acclaimed AudioNotes series of CD-listeners’ guides to the chamber music literature. San Francisco Classical Voice has said of this series: “The quality of these CDs—their sound, commentary, music and performers—deserve a separate category in the classical Grammy Awards. AudioNotes engage the concertgoer’s senses, brain, and heart, so that the spirit of music can come through.” Patrick Castillo has penned and produced AudioNotes for the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, for whom he has also given pre-concert lectures.

Patrick Castillo holds a B.A. in music composition and sociology from Vassar College, where his teachers included Lois V. Vierk, Annea Lockwood, and Richard Wilson. He has also participated in master classes with John Harbison, Alvin Lucier, Roger Reynolds, and Charles Wuorinen. While at Vassar, Patrick Castillo served as composer-in-residence for the Mahagonny Ensemble, a collective of performers specializing in twentieth-century music. His Requiem aeternam for mixed chorus and chamber ensemble, composed for the Mahagonny, was awarded the 2001 Jean Slater Edson Prize.