The official website of ROBERT XAVIER RODRIGUEZ

September 2024

Robert Xavier Rodríguez’s Tlaloc for Orchestra (2024) had its world premiere by the Plano Symphony Orchestra, Héctor Guzmán, Conductor, on September 28, 2024. The PSO commissioned the work to open the orchestra’s new home, The Robinson Fine Arts Center. Tlaloc is a celebration of the ancient Aztec god of rain, thunder and fertility, and it features multiple percussion instruments and dramatic echoes of pre-Hispanic Mexico. In progress is a commission from Hélène Wickett and Orchestra Parnassus in San Francisco for a piano concerto, Concertino per l’amicizia, to be premiered in 2025-2026. Rodríguez’s next commission is from the University of Texas at Dallas for a new work for narrator, chorus and chamber orchestra for the opening of UTD’s new Athenaeum Arts Center in 2028.

In preparation is an all-Rodríguez CD on the Music from Copland House series featuring the chamber version of The Dot and the Line, based on the classic children’s book by Norton Juster, with Jamie Bernstein, narrator. The orchestral version was commissioned jointly by the Dallas Symphony and Carnegie Hall. Jamie Bernstein also narrated the Dallas premiere. The Copland House disc will also include The Food of Love for violin, actor and piano, commissioned by the Bowdoin Music Festival, and the chamber version of Rodriguez’s ballet Estampie. The original orchestral version was commissioned by the Dallas Ballet. The Music from Copland House Players will give the New York premiere of Estampie on their concert series during 24-25.

Recent seasons have seen multiple performances of Rodríguez’s iconic opera Frida, based on the life of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo. The most recent production was at the Orlando Opera in January 2024. It followed the British premiere at the Leeds Opera Festival in August 2023. Frida was premiered in Philadelphia in 1991. The New York Times named Frida the “best opera/musical theater of 1991.” Performances in recent seasons have included Anchorage Opera, Portland Opera, Opera Southwest, Opera Cultura, El Paso Opera and Detroit Opera (repeat production).

Previous productions include the Florida Grand Opera, Long Beach Opera, Cincinnati Opera, Brooklyn Academy of Music Next Wave Festival, American Repertory Theater in Boston, Houston Grand Opera, Long Beach Opera, Michigan Opera Theatre, Festival de Mayo in Guadalajara, the Vienna Schauspielhaus and productions in Recklinghausen, Nordhausen and throughout the United States.

Other recent premieres have included the 2022 song cycle L’Arc-en-Ciel d’Arlequin (Harlequin’s Rainbow) for mezzo-soprano and string quartet. Rodríguez set twelve poems about Harlequin in the original French from Albert Giraud’s Pierrot Lunaire. In September 2022, Rachel Calloway and the Amernet Quartet gave a preview in Miami at Florida International University and performed the premiere at the University of Texas at Dallas. Commissioned by UT Dallas, the work is now available on a CD from Albany Records along with Romance with a Double Bass for narrator, contrabass and piano performed by Daniel Nix, contrabass, Mikhail Berestnev, piano and Mary-Margaret Pyeatt, narrator. Commissioned by Gary Karr, the Romance is a setting of an English translation of Anton Chekhov’s comic short story of the same name.

Piñata para los amantes for clarinet and cello had its premiere in July 2023 at the Grand Teton Music Festival in Jackson, Wyoming. The San Antonio-based SOLI Chamber Ensemble commissioned the work for two of its founding members, Stephanie Key, clarinet and David Mollenhauer, cello. The composer based the duo on his concert overture Piñata. SOLI repeated the work in their 23-24 season.

In January 2023, Naxos released a CD of Rodríguez’ Xochiquetzal for violin and six percussionists, performed by Nicholas Kitchen, violin and the New England Conservatory Percussion Ensemble, conducted by Frank Epstein. The NEC led a consortium of university ensembles to commission the work. There is also a recording of the chamber version with Chloé Trevor, violin, and Jeff Lankov, piano, on a release with Rodríguez’s second string quartet, Above All, Women, with the Amernet Quartet.

23-24 also saw performances of Rodríguez’s Flight, the Story of Wilbur and Orville Wright (Dayton Philharmonic and New Albany Symphony), Piñata (Chattanooga Symphony) and the ballet Meta 4 (Yorke Dance Project, multiple touring performances in the UK). Other performances include the New York premiere of the orchestral version of The Dot and the Line (2017) at Carnegie Hall with John Lithgow, narrator, and the Orchestra of St. Luke’s, Edwin Atwater, conductor.

Additional opera performances in recent seasons have included Monkey See, Monkey Do (Opera Nova), Tango (Aperio and Aston Magna Festival) and La Curandera (SJSU Opera Theater, San José). Among recent orchestral performances are Hot Buttered Rumba (Plano Symphony), The Dot and the Line (Louisville Symphony), Fanfarria Son-Risa (San Antonio Symphony) and the Agnus Dei for Mozart’s Mass in C-Minor (School for Music and the Performing Arts in Mannheim, Germany). Performances by the Dayton Philharmonic include Agnus Dei from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, A Colorful Symphony, Flight, The Dot and the Line and We, the People.

Earlier recordings of Rodríguez’s music include an all-Rodríguez CD on the First Edition label, in conjunction with the Meet the Composer/Exxon Orchestra Residency Program, in which Rodríguez served as Composer-in-Residence with the Dallas Symphony Orchestra. The CD features Oktoechos (Dallas Symphony, conducted by Eduardo Mata), Favola Boccaccesca (Louisville Symphony, conducted by Lawrence Leighton Smith) and The Song of Songs (Voices of Change, conducted by the composer). The CD is part of a three-disc release featuring works of Rodríguez, Joan Tower and Christopher Rouse.

Other releases feature an Albany album of Rodríguez’ chamber music with performances of Trio I, Trio II, Trio III (Sortrilege) by the Clavier Trio and Meta 4 by the Colorado Quartet. Additional CDs feature Flight, the Story of Wilbur and Orville Wright, text by Sukey Smith, for narrator and orchestra, with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Neal Gittleman and actress Allison Janney (The West Wing) narrator and Tango, with Paul Sperry, tenor, and members of the San Diego Symphony, conducted by the composer.

Rodríguez’s music has been performed by conductors such as Sir Neville Marriner, Antal Dorati, Eduardo Mata, Andrew Litton, James DePriest, Sir Raymond Leppard, Keith Lockhart and Leonard Slatkin and such organizations as the New York City Opera, the National Opera of Mexico, Brooklyn Academy of Music, Boston Repertory Theater, American Music Theater Festival (now Prince Theater), Dallas Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Pennsylvania Opera Theater, Michigan Opera Theatre, Orlando Opera, The Aspen Music Festival, The Juilliard Focus Series, The Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Mexico City Philharmonic, Toronto Radio Orchestra, The Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, San Antonio, Knoxville, Indianapolis, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Boston and Chicago Symphonies, The Los Angeles Philharmonic, National Symphony, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Louisville Orchestra and Cleveland Orchestra. Rodríguez’s chamber works have been performed in London, Paris, Dijon, Monte Carlo, Berlin, Stockholm, Copenhagen, Edinburgh, The Hague and other musical centers.

Rodríguez’ music is published exclusively by G. Schirmer, and twenty CDs of his work have been recorded on the Newport, Crystal, Orion, Gasparo, Urtext, Pro Arte Musicae, ACA, CRI (Grammy nomination), Albany, First Edition and Naxos labels. Rodríguez has served as Composer-in-Residence of the Dallas Symphony and the San Antonio Symphony. He holds an Endowed Chair of Art & Aesthetic Studies and is director of the Musica Nova ensemble at The University of Texas at Dallas. He is also active as a guest lecturer and conductor.