Gonzalo Varela Biography
Composer, sound designer and guitarist born in 1990 in Montevideo, Uruguay. His passion for artistic collaboration has led to his work being part of numerous video games released on all major platforms, feature films, audiovisual series, short films, theatre plays and other media. He has received awards from Uruguay’s Ministry of Education and Culture, Fulbright, the Kino London Short Film Festival, the Uruguayan Choral Association and Columbia College Chicago among others, and compositions of his have been played in concerts, festivals and workshops in at least nine countries.
Additional publications of his work include a wide range of music albums, books, articles and software applications. As a performer he has given over three hundred concerts in four countries. He holds a Master of Fine Arts degree, profile: Music Composition for the Screen, from Columbia College Chicago (United States), where his main professor was Kubilay Uner.
He also holds two Bachelor’s degrees from the Universidad de la República (University of the Republic) (Uruguay): one in Music, profile: Composition (main professor: Osvaldo Budón), and another one in Musical Performance, profile: Guitar (main professors: Ramiro Agriel and Gonzalo Victoria). In addition, he has studied composition with Coriún Aharonián, Joel Goodman, Ronit Kirchman and Chance Thomas, as well as music genres like Flamenco, Tango, Jazz, Candombe and Javanese Gamelan with various teachers.
He currently is an Academic Assistant to the Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the Universidad de la República, and teaches at both the Universidad de la República and the Universidad Tecnológica (Uruguay). Besides, he has held teaching positions at two other universities: Columbia College Chicago and the Universidad Católica del Uruguay, and has given short courses, workshops and lectures at additional universities from Argentina.
He has also worked for composers such as Joel Corelitz, Roque Baños, Tom Howe, Ilya Levinson and Sebastian Huydts, either in the context of his university roles or independently.
