Roberto Sierra

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Roberto Sierra (born 1953) is a Puerto Rican composer.

Sierra studied composition in Europe, notably with György Ligeti in Hamburg , Germany. He came to prominence in 1987 when his first major orchestral composition, Júbilo, premiered at Carnegie Hall with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. Since then, his works have been performed by the orchestras of San Francisco, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Detroit, San Antonio, and Phoenix, by the American Composers Orchestra, the National Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Quartet, Continuum, England's BBC Symphony, and at Wolf Trap, the Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Festival Casals of Puerto Rico, France's Festival de Lille, the Schleswig-Holstein Festival, and Germany's Neue Musik Bonn.

On February 2, 2006 Sierra's Missa Latina (Pro Pax), premiered at the Kennedy Center, in Washington D.C., conducted by Leonard Slatkin to considerable acclaim. The Washington Times judged it "...the most significant symphonic premiere in the District since the late Benjamin Britten's stunning War Requiem was first performed in the still-unfinished Washington National Cathedral in the late 1960s...".

Sierra's Concierto Barroco takes it's inspiration from a scene in Alejo Carpentier’s novel of the same in which Handel and Vivaldi jam with a Cuban slave during the Venice Carnival. Sierra was commissioned by guitarist Manuel Barrueco to write a concerto that tried to capture what that might have been like. Eladio Scharron commented on Soundboard: "Sierra achieved - masterfully - a synthesis of a tradition of five centuries old... This work is truly a masterwork..."