Chris Pratorius Gómez
Chris Pratorius Gómez is a composer and pianist based in Santa Cruz, California. He has written three one-act operas, a harp concerto, two orchestra works and many pieces for solo voice, choir, chamber ensembles and electronic media that have been performed in San Francisco, Istanbul, New York, Guatemala and other spots around the world. As composer-in-residence for Opera Parallèle, he wrote a trio of children’s operas for their Hands-on-Opera educational program. The first opera, My Head is Full of Colors, premiered in 2014 and the second, Amazing Grace, premiered in November of 2015.
The third opera, Xochtil and the Flowers, which tells the story of a young girl and her family who move to San Francisco from El Salvador, premiered in November 2016 a few days after the U.S. election. Claroscuro en Flor, a 25 minute concerto for harp and chamber orchestra commissioned by the American Harp Society and San José Chamber Orchestra, saw its premiere in 2013 under the baton of Barbara Day Turner. Another notable instrumental work is his guitar sonata Ondas do Mar de Vigo, which can be found on Mesut Özgen’s CD Troubadour
published by Golden Horn Records. Other commissions include the chamber concerto Untogether, not Apart, premiered by New Music Works in 2014; a fresh setting of Pablo Neruda’s Poema XX, commissioned by Nicole Paiement for the BluePrint project; Contraponientes, a choral song-cycle based on poetry by Federico García Lorca commissioned by Ariose Singers and Being of One’s Hour, commissioned by Robert Kelley for Santa Cruz Ballet Theater.
Chris teaches theory, history, composition and piano at the University of California, Santa Cruz and at Cal State Monterey Bay. He is a frequent director with Santa Cruz Chamber Players, gives the Sunday pre-concert talks for the Santa Cruz County Symphony, accompanies at The Studio, School of Classical Ballet in Soquel, CA and maintains a private studio.
