Resident Scholar
Baylor University
Carlos Colon’ Vitae
Email Carlos Colón
Carlos Colón, is Assistant Director for Worship and Chapel of the Office of Spiritual Life at Baylor University. He is a composer, liturgist, and cultural promoter, specializing in music that is both academically serious and ecclesiastically valuable. His recent projects lie at the intersection of social justice and religious change.
Carlos Colón was born in Chalchuapa, El Salvador. When he was 14, he was forced to leave El Salvador and took refuge in Guatemala City. A resident of the United States since 1986, he holds a B.M. from Belmont University and a M.M. from Baylor University. He became a U.S. citizen in 2001.
His music has been performed in festivals in the United States and abroad. Recently, his music has been performed in Carnegie Hall, Venezuela National Radio, the Calvin Worship Symposium, and the Festival de Música Contemporánea of El Salvador. His music has also received acclaim in England, Cuba and other countries.
Colón’s international heritage and personal experience of civil war inform his compositions’ calls to justice, peace, and beauty. Las Lamentaciones de Rufina Amaya, a requiem in memory of the victims of El Mozote (where the Salvadorian army massacred 800 peasants in 1981*), was premiered at Baylor University’s Armstrong Browning Library in 2008. It has also been performed in Dallas by the Texas Voices; in El Salvador by the choir of the National Opera; and in Grand Rapids by the Choral Scholars.
Obertura Para Un Mártir,** a work commemorating slain Archbishop Oscar Romero, was commissioned by the President and First Lady of El Salvador and premiered there in 2010.
Colón and his family reside in Waco, TX.
* http://elsalvadormusical.blogspot.com/2008/05/las-lamentaciones-de-rufina-amaya-parte.html
** For more on El Mozote see Mark Danner’s article in The New Yorker: http://www.markdanner.com/articles/show/the_truth_of_el_mozote
*** http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjKLV66HAww
– See more at: http://www.baylorisr.org/scholars/c/colon-carlos/#sthash.A4lFmtTv.dpuf
