Fernando Rivas

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Fernando Rivas is a Cuban-born composer, pianist, arranger and producer. He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music where he studied with National Arts Award recipient David Diamond. He has worked extensively in film and theater, as well as in broadcast media and advertising. Mr. Rivas has won several awards including the Princess Grace Foundation Grant for outstanding original work in musical theater and composed fifteen musicals and hundreds of songs. His work was featured by the Theater Communications Group in a collaboration with Maria Irene Fornes and Tito Puente in Lovers and Keepers. Mr. Rivas composed for the popular show Sesame Street for singers as diverse as Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan and Cindy Lauper winning two Emmys and a Grammy (for best Children¹s Album 1998 - ELMOPALOOZA) along the way. In 1997, along with Luis Santeiro, he received the Richard Rodgers Development Award for the piece Barrio Babies, which was produced by the Denver Center Theatrical Company. Rivas also composed a musical, Selena, Forever, with author Eddie Gallardo, based on the tragic life of the renown Tejano singer, which premiered in San Antonio in 2000. His poetry and short fiction have been published on the Internet in several e-zines and he is a freelance contributor to the Charleston City Paper. Currently he is on the staff of the Fine Arts department at Porter-Gaud School in Charleston and has also recently collaborated with the Charleston Symphony Orchestra as arranger and pianist.