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FERNANDO M. RIVAS
music composer and pianist
Fernando M. Rivas graduated from the Juilliard School with a Bachelor of Music degree in Composition. He was introduced at Juilliard by his first composition teacher, Benjamin Lees, received a full scholarship and studied with National Arts Award recipient David Diamond and Vincent Persichetti among others. Mr. Rivas has won the Marion Freschl Prize for Vocal Composition, the Princess Grace Foundation Grant for outstanding original work in musical theater, as well as
two Emmys and one Grammy for subsequent work in children’s music.
Mr. Rivas has written extensively for television, radio, film and theater composing background music and themes. He was Director of Continuity for WSKQ radio in New York. He has written identification jingles for Channel 41, WXTV and Channel 47, WNJU both in the tri-state area. He wrote, arranged, produced and recorded the campaign jingle for Telemundo’s Channel 47. Mr. Rivas owns his own studio and publishing company, JAM [Just Arrived Music] registered with ASCAP. In 1995 CBS America chose Mr. Rivas’ studio to record their national Spanish-language radio program HBO Espectaculares.
In addition to the commercial work, Mr. Rivas has also composed for the theater, writing and co-writing fourteen musicals as well as hundreds of songs. His work was featured by the Theater Communications Group when he collaborated with Maria Irene Fornes and Tito Puente in the musical work Lovers and Keepers. In 1990 he began to write for the Children’s Television Workshop (Now Sesame Workshop ) and has composed a number of songs for the show Sesame Street featuring singers as diverse as Celia Cruz, Gloria Estefan and Cindy Lauper. In 1995 and in 1996, along with the other writers and composers on Sesame Street Mr. Rivas was the recipient of 2 Emmys for his work on that show.
Mr. Rivas has worked as musical director with the Coconut Grove Playhouse in the show Miami Lights ; with INTAR theater in New York in various productions; with the Puerto Rican Travelling Theater, for Lady Liberty . He has scored six full lengh feature films, most notably Ranger , produced by Alexandria Films and Carmelita Tropicana , (Your Kunst is Your Waffen) an independent short feature which was shown at the Lincoln Center Film Festival. He has worked with many latino artists of international fame such as Willie Colon, Iris Chacon, Paquito de Rivera, El Gran Combo and others as keyboardist, composer and arranger. And in 1993 he was called upon to program keyboards for a road production of the Broadway hit Will Rogers’ Follies.
In 1997, Mr.Rivas and Luis Santeiro, were the recipients of the Richard Rodgers Award for the musical-theater piece: Barrio Babies. A scene from the musical was featured in the Hispanic Heritage Awards which aired on NBC in the fall of 1998. Earlier in the same year, Gloria Estefan recorded Mr. Rivas’ song Mambo I, I, I on the Grammy-winning Elmopalooza album for Sesame
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