BIOGRAPHY

Alex Rotundo started composing when he was 6, first writing pieces on room walls and

house doors that were soon lost due to cleanups and paint jobs. His first composition for orchestra was composed when he was 10, and premiered in May 2010 by the intermediate division of the Peninsula Youth Orchestra. From 2014 to 2018 he studied composition and violin performance at the Pre-College division of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music (SFCM), and has won composition awards including Honorable Mention in SFCM’s 2017 Kris Getz Award for his Perpetual Motion for piano trio; 1st place in the 2014 composition competition of the Multicultural Sonic Evolution, which led to Antagonism, a piece for clarinet and piano, being premiered in New York City; 1st place of the National Association of Composers, USA’s 2012 award for his Canzone del Violino Verde, a composition for violin and orchestra; and 3rd place in the Open Own Composition section of the 2011 United States Open Music Competition for his solo piano composition Lamberto. In 2018 and 2019, he attended the summer composition program of the European American Musical Alliance in Paris, France, and was a composition fellow at the 2021 Brevard Music Festival in North Carolina, and the 2023 Choral Chameleon Summer Institute in New York.

Outside of his composition studies, Alex is serving as pianist for the Toledo Opera Artist-in-Residence program for the 2024-25 season. He was also a violinist in California’s Peninsula Youth Orchestra up until 2018, and played upright and electric bass in the Hillsdale High School Jazz Ensemble. As a pianist, he has earned a regular High School Diploma in Music with Honors, from the National Guild of Piano Teachers of the American College of Musicians; completed the MTAC Certificate of Merit Advanced Level Exam with Honors; performed in MTAC Certificate of Merit Panel Audition in Regional and State Panel Finals. He holds an M.M. in Composition at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music under the tutelage of Mason Bates, and also studied with David Conte in SFCM's Pre-College program. In between, he earned his B.M. from the Peabody Institute in Baltimore, MD, where he studied with Kevin Puts. Upon graduating from Peabody, he was a recipient of the school's Otto Ortmann Composition Prize.