Claudio Aizaga, Ecuador Born in Quito, Ecuador on August 7, 1928, composer, choir director, pianist and musicologist, Aizaga began his studies in 1946 with pianist Francoise Lambert. While at the Quito National Conservatory of Music, he wrote the Ballet Cumandá  based on a novel by Juan Leon Mera, and a prelude that won the First Prize in the National Conservatory of Music Composition Competition. His Sonatina for flute and piano was premiered at the Second International Music Festival in Moscow in 1984. Tonight’s piece, Fantasia in E minor, is dedicated to violinist Jorge Saade-Scaff, and was premiered and recorded in Stuttgart, Germany in 1997 with the Ecuadorian Youth Symphony Orchestra during the First European Youth Symphony Orchestra Festival.