Benjamín Gutiérrez


"Bosquejos" de Benjamín Gutiérrez from Musical Genres Of Costa Rica on Vimeo.




Benjamin Gutiérrez Sáenz was born in San José, Costa Rica on January 3rd, 1937.  At a very young age he began his musical studies with his maternal  grandmother.

 In 1953 he entered the Conservatory of Music at the University of Costa    Rica where he studied piano with Miguel Angel Quesada.  He left to Guatemala in 1957, after receiving a grant, and studied piano and composition with Augusto Adenois at the Conservatorio Nacional de Música de Guatemala.

     In 1965, by means of a grant, Gutiérrez was able to study at the Latin American Center for Music Study of the Torcuato Di Tella Institute of Buenos Aires, Argentina. There he was to earn the Degree of Composer at the highest level based on his studies of orchestration and composition with the renowned composer Alberto Ginastera. This stay in Argentina was a critical time in his artistic formation, particularly his studies with Ginastera, and put him more deeply into contact with Latin American music.

     Gutiérrez's primary means of livelihood has been as a professor of musical composition at the University of Costa Rica, where he now has Professor Emeritus status after many years of service, which included a period as Director of the School of Music. Through the years he has conducted orchestras, choirs, and operas within Latin America and Europe. At one time he was the Assistant Director of the National Symphony Orchestra of Costa Rica.

    Gutiérrez built his reputation as a composer in the '60s and '70s and continued to produce major works into the mid '80s. In 1983 he worked with Pierre Boulez at the IRCAM in Paris. His last piece to receive the national award in Costa Rica was El Regalo de los Reyes o Las Dos Evas, an opera which was recognized for its quality in 1985.

   As a composer he received a number of awards. Examples would be honorable mention at the Aspen Music Festival in 1960 and first prize at the Juegos Florales de Guatemala in 1966. But his major awards are the national award within Costa Rica for musical composition which is named the "Aquileo Echeverría Award." Gutiérrez received this national award a record number of times: 1962, 1963, 1964, 1973, 1977, 1980, and 1985.

   Based on the length of his career as a composer, the variety of what he has composed, and the awards that he has received, Benjamín Gutiérrez has long been considered Costa Rica's leading composer in the latter part of the twentieth century.  In 2000 he was honored as the Musician of the Century by La Nación Diary (most important newspaper of Costa Rica), and in 2001 he received the Magón Award, for a work of a lifetime.