Felipe Lara

In this episode, I chat with Professor Felipe Lara. Professor Lara is a Brazilian-American composer and Associate Professor of Composition at the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, praised by the New York Times as "a gifted Brazilian-American modernist" whose music possesses "voluptuous, elemental lyricism." A 2024 Pulitzer Prize finalist for his Double Concerto for esperanza spalding, Claire Chase, and orchestra, his works have been commissioned and performed by leading ensembles and orchestras including the Los Angeles Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic, Ensemble InterContemporain, Ensemble Modern, JACK Quartet, and the International Contemporary Ensemble, at venues ranging from Carnegie Hall to Walt Disney Concert Hall and the Philharmonie de Paris. His honors include a Radcliffe Institute Fellowship from Harvard University, the Ernst von Siemens Musikstiftung commission, and the Koussevitzky Music Foundation commission, and three portrait albums of his music were released on Kairos (Vienna) in 2024 and 2025. He holds a Ph.D. from New York University and has previously taught at Harvard, the University of Chicago, Boston Conservatory at Berklee, and NYU.