Bernardo Illari is a specialist in Latin American music from the colonial and early national periods. He received his Ph.D. in Music History from the University of Chicago in 2002, with a dissertation entitled "Polychoral Culture: Cathedral Music in La Plata (Bolivia), 1680-1730."
Professor Illari's second book-size project, Domenico Zipoli: Para una genealogía de la música clásica latinoamericana (Domenico Zipoli: Towards a Genealogy of Latin American Classical Music) has been awarded the 2003 Premio de Musicología "Casa de las Américas." Currently, he is finishing a book on Criollo composers from La Plata (present-day Sucre, Bolivia) to be published by S-B in Buenos Aires (Argentina), and writing another book on the music of the Guarani missions in the seventeenth century. His extensive list of publications includes an edited volume and about two dozen scholarly articles in Spanish, English, Italian, and Arab published in the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina.
Before coming to UNT, Professor Illari held academic appointments at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) and University of Hong Kong. He has also taught classes at the Universidad de Valladolid, Universidad Complutense de Madrid and Conservatorio de Salamanca (Spain), and has been reading papers in professional meetings regularly since 1985. He earned two AMS awards, the Howard Mayer Brown award in 1996 and an AMS 50 fellowship in 1997
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Since 1992, he has been contributing scores, advice and notes to several European-based early music soloists and ensembles, including Ensemble Elyma, The Rare Fruit Council, Grupo Vocal Gregor, Cuarteto Jacarandá, and others, which resulted in fifteen CDs of colonial music from Peru and Bolivia. These projects include the edition of the operas La púrpura de la rosa (by Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco, 1701) and San Ignacio de Loyola (as compiled by Martin Schmid, Santa Ana de Chiquitos, c. 1762), monographic CDs dedicated to works by Domenico Zipoli, Tomás de Torrejón y Velasco and Juan de Araujo, and thematic projects such as villancico settings of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz's poetry and Fiesta Criolla, the sounding representation of a colonial festival in Chuquisaca (Bolivia). He has also worked (both concerts and CDs) with the Boston-based Ensemble Abendmusik, directed by James David Christie, and the Jerusalem PHOENIX Ensemble, directed by Dr. Myrna Herzog. Between 2006 and 2008, he created three projects and a CD with music from Sucre and Cusco for the UNT Collegium singers and orchestra (dir. by Lyle Nordstrom). Recently, Prof. Illari attended the highly successful premiere of his concert project with hitherto unknown pieces by Juan Pedro Esnaola and Mariano Pablo Rosquellas as performed by soloists, the Cantoría de la Merced (dir. by Santiago Ruiz) and La del Suquía baroque orchestra (dir. by Manfredo Kraemer) at the VII Festival "Camino de las Estancias" in Argentina.
View Dr. Illari's profile on the UNT Faculty Information System