Leonardo Idrobo Arce

Born in Santiago de Cali, Colombia, the 22 august 1977.
In 1995 he moved to Santa Fe de Bogotá to study music at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. He was there under the tutorship of Roberto García, Horacio Lapidus, Hegberto Bermúdez, Angela Rodríguez and Blás E. Atehortua, among many others.
During 1997 he studied composition with Juan C. Marulanda at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. This, thanks to a scholarship given by the Fundación Mazda para el Arte y la Ciencia.
Between 1998 and 2000 he took occasionally analysis and composition lessons with Rodolfo Acosta R.
At the end of 1998, without having finished his studies, and after having failed in his effort of adapting to the academy, he decided to interrupt his studies and dedicate himself to composition as a full-time activity.
In 2001, he decided to undertake a trip to Switzerland with the purpose of styding once again. Basel was the place he chose for this. He studied composition with Detlev Müller-Siemens and Erik Oña, and other subjects with Dorothé Schubarth, Roland Moser, Hanspeter Aeschlimann, Markus Jans, Hans Saner and Jakob Ullmann, among others.
He has taken part of several seminars, courses and workshops in Colombia, Spain, Hungary, Germany and Switzerland, as well as composition masterclasses with Coriun Aharonian, Graciela Paraskevaidis, Beat Furrer, Michael Jarrell, Jonathan Harvey, Marco Stroppa, Klaus Huber, Mark Andre, Brice Pauset and Helmut Lachenmann, among many others.
In 2008 he assisted the german composer Jakob Ullmann (*1958) in the realization of the electronic part of his piece PRAHA: celetná-karlova-maiselova, commissioned by the Deutschlandfunkf, and premiered at the Forum für Neue Musik 2008 in Cologne, Germany.
Leonardo Idrobo has tried twice to win the composition prize „Una ciudad que sueña“ (Bogotá, Colombia): he has won the National Prize for Composition given by the Colombian Cultural Minestry (1997), has awarded scholarships and commissions given by the Marianne & Curt Dienemann Foundation (Lucern, CH), Christoph Delz Foundation (Basel, CH), Experimentalstudio des SWR (Freiburg am Breisgau, Germany), and a residency given both by the Colombian Cultural Minestry and FONCA (Mexico).
His music has been played in Colombia, Mexico, Switzerland, Germany, Poland and Hungary, by ensembles such as Tambuco, Ensamble3, Ensemble Phoenix, Ensamble CG, and by the Basel Symphonic Orchestra.
Leonardo Idrobo lives with his wife and son in Basel, where he also works as a freelance composer, music note editor, and for the International Society for Contemporary Music (IGNM-Basel).