Born in New York City, Carlos Rodriguez studied composition at UCLA, where he was a first-prize winner in the Atwater Kent Competition for Composition. Also a prize winner in the NACUSA (National Association of Composers, USA) Competition for his Five Movements for Solo Amplified/Processed Flute, he has received an ASCAP Foundation Grant to Young Composers for his suite for solo cello with electronics, Crater Lizards. He was a Fellow in the Los Angeles Philharmonic's Festival/Boulez L.A. and a recipient of a Brody Arts Fund Fellowship in the Performing Arts from the California Community Foundation. He was a founding member of the Los Angeles-based Lo Cal Composers, a non-profit New Music performance collective under whose auspices he premiered numerous works, including a short symphony for strings and percussion, a setting of texts by Chilean poet Pablo Neruda for soprano and large chamber ensemble, music for Brass and Timpani, and many compositions for electronically altered acoustic instruments, both in solo and chamber groupings.
His works have been featured at the New Music Los Angeles Festival, the SCREAM (Southern California Resource for Electro-Acoustic Music) Festival, UCLA's American Music Festival: a Retrospective, the USC Contemporary Music Ensemble, the Studio of Electronic Music in Hartford, Connecticut, and at Mobius in Boston. He has received commissions from the Debussy Trio ("De Tiempo y Agua y Olas..."), the Caliban Quartet of Toronto ("The Isle is Full of Noises"), and the L.A.-based eXindigo!, who premiered his setting of two poems by Charles Bukowski ("This Poet Bukowski").
The Los Angeles Philharmonic has commisioned three works from him: Pasacalle (1992), Fanfarria para Los Angeles (1994), and Fabulas (1996), all of which were premiered under its Music Director, Esa-Pekka Salonen.
His one act children's operetta, "Nerdlandia" (from a libretto by Gary Soto), commissioned by the Los Angeles Music Center Opera, was premiered in 1998 with additional Southern California performance tours by L.A. Opera in 1999.
His ballet score, "Ex Machina," commissioned and premiered by the Raiford Rogers Modern Ballet (formerly the Los Angeles Chamber Ballet), went on to England for five performances at London's prestigious Sadler's Wells in 2003. His music is published by Carl Fischer, LLC and Fatrock, Ink.
The three selections for cello above are the inner three movements (of five total) from his suite "Crater Lizards" for Solo Cello with Electronics, which was written for and performed in these recordings by Los Angeles Cellist Matt Cooker.
Jeffrey Krieger, Principal Cellist with the Hartford (CT) Symphony Orchestra has also performed "Crater Lizards" and discusses it along with six other works for "E-Cello" in an article written for the Internet Cello Society:
"Seven Very Unique Works for the E-Cello" by Jeffrey Krieger
