Composer, pianist, conductor, and educator Harold Gutiérrez began his musical studies at the National Conservatory of Colombia and the Superior Academy of Arts in Bogotá. Mr. Gutiérrez holds a Bachelor of Music and a Master’s in Composition from the Aaron Copland School of Music at Queens College, in New York City. Mr. Gutiérrez has been an Associate Music Director at the Society of Educational Arts in New York City since 2003 and Piano and Theory teacher in the area of Long Island, NY since 2005. In 2009, he took first place in the Long Island League of Composers Competition and he received the Michael Feinstein Scholarship awarded by City University of New York. In 2010, he received the ACE Award as music director of the production "Rhythms of Latin America." In 2011, he received the "Leo Kraft Award for Theory and Composition" granted by City University of New York. In 2013, his orchestral work "Latin-American Journey" for Youth Orchestra won first place in the National Symphonic Composition Competition hosted by the Ministry of Culture of the Government of Colombia. Thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, Mr. Gutiérrez was commissioned in 2015 as a composer by the Quintet of the Americas in collaboration with The Corona Youth Music Project. www.haroldguti.com