Benjamín Juárez Echenique

Long Description

Benjamín Juárez Echenique is an orchestra conductor and scholar with more than four decades of experience in the arts. He was born in Mexico City on July 17, 1951.

He studied in Mexico at the National School of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), at the California Institute of the Arts, where he obtained his Master of Fine Arts in Music, as well as in Italy, France and England. He was principal guest conductor and assistant conductor of the State of Mexico Symphony Orchestra from 1979 to 1981; associate conductor of the Mexico City Philharmonic from 1983 to 1987; and music director of the Great Mexico City Festival in 1989-90.

He has given lectures and conducted workshops on music and arts in Mexico and abroad, where in 1984, Juárez was honored as the first Latin American to conduct an orchestra in China. He served as Head of the Music Department at UNAM, Music Director of the Great Mexico City Festival, and taught at UNAM, the National Conservatory and the Higher School of Music of the National Institute of Fine Arts. He also founded the early music ensemble Angelicum de Puebla, dedicated to the recovery of 17th-century music from the Puebla Cathedral Archive.

From September 2006 to August 2009 he served as General Director of Mexico's National Center for the Arts (CENART).

On August 4, 2010, Benjamín E. Juárez assumed the position of Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Boston University.