Manuel Sosa

Manuel Sosa is a Venezuelan–American composer, who resides in Brooklyn, New York. He received early training on the violin at the José Ángel Lamas Superior Conservatory in Caracas, while also pursuing his interest in architecture and drawing, both of which still inform his approach to writing music. At sixteen, and seeking to expand his studies in composition, he moved to the U.S. with the certainty that this would be the country where he would live for many decades to come. Latin American culture and pacing, volumetric space, and color continue to be essential to his vision, as are the influence of his North American experiences.  

He is a graduate of the Juilliard School, where he received B.M., M.M., and D.M.A., under the guidance of Stephen Albert, Robert Beaser, and David Diamond. He has also studied composition with Joseph Castaldo, Jacob Druckman, Earl Kim, Jacques-Louis Monod, and Bruce Saylor; composition seminars with Mark Andre, Beat Furrer, Georg Friedrich Haas, Karel Husa, Adriana Hölszky, Helmut Lachenmann; harmony with Mary A. Cox; conducting with Jacques-Louis Monod; and Afro-Caribbean percussion with Jerry González. His orchestral and chamber music works have been performed in North and South America, Europe, and Asia, and he has collaborated with painters, dancers, and sculptors in the creation of multimedia environments. His scholarly work concentrates on the art and music of South America, and his writings have been published in Europe and South America.  

Manuel Sosa has received fellowships from Meet the Composer (Van Lier, 2002), the Civitella Ranieri Foundation (2009), the John S. Guggenheim Foundation (2011), and he has been a fellow of Yaddo on several occasions. He teaches composition in the Pre-College Division of the Juilliard School; he joined the musical studies faculty at the Curtis Institute of Music in 2017.