Fernando Rivas

Present Music Today our music is gray another day passing like heavy mist. Today we listen to the absent rainfall the wished-for clarity a sky of unquestioned brilliance and the answer is a humid stillness leaving a breathy taste of yesterdays. Today and now move as sluggish as a New Orleans funeral struggling to be rhythmic in the midst of weeping women and dark veils, trumpets blaring to the saints in syncopated and out-of-tune fanfares from the lips of ancient and all knowing black faces, forlorn eyes and a century of indignation. To-day is a two syllable echo becoming a used-up Polaroid shot flashed before the forgetful eye. Today you are not here and this is, more simply stated heartache, torch-song time long tremulous phrases from the night-club singer a few blocks from the red-light district in an after-hours, sometime after two a.m. and forty years ago. Wind, that went through there travels to me now, substitutes these words floating in the image of old jalopies rot-gut gin and speak-easies jazz, as flowing and pointless as uncaring as this day moving toward nothing in particular an equation of algebraic indefinites adding up to this draining emotional emptiness a final echo of Satchmo9s trumpet and the scraggly scratch of the needle. At the end of the spinning record today begins where it left off an overcast prediction of the final tomorrow.

Fernando M. Rivas is a Cuban-born composer, arranger and producer. He graduated from the Juilliard School of Music in 1977 with a Bachelor's in Composition. There he studied with David Diamond (winner of the National Arts Award) and Vincent Persichetti. Mr. Rivas won the Marion Freschl Prize for Vocal Composition in 1975 and the Princess Grace Foundation Grant in 1986 for outstanding original work in musical theater. Mr. Rivas has written extensively for television, radio, film and theater, composing background music, themes and jingles. He was Director of Continuity for WSKQ radio in New York in 1985 and again in 1987. 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 1995 Creciendo Contigo campaign jingle for Telemundo's Channel 47. Mr. Rivas owns his own studio and publishing company, JAM, Just Arrived Music listed with ASCAP. In 1995 CBS America chose Mr. Rivas' studio to record their national Spanish-language radio program HBO Espectaculares. As well as the commercial work, Mr. Rivas has also composed for the theater, writing and co-writing nine musicals as well as hundreds of songs. His work was featured in 1987 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 and has composed a number of songs for the popular show Sesame Street featuring singers as diverse as Celia Cruz and Cindy Lauper. In 1995 and in 1996, along with the other writers and composers on Sesame Street Mr. Rivas was the recipient of Emmys for his work on that show. Mr. Rivas has worked as musical director with the Coconut Grove Playhouse in the show Miami Lights, 1990; with INTAR theater in New York in various productions; with the Puerto Rican Travelling Theater in 1986, for Lady Liberty. He has written musical scores for five full lengh feature films, most notably Ranger, produced by Alexandria Films. He has worked with many artists of international fame such as Celia Cruz, 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. As a producer and musical arranger his work can be heard on the Vedisco label on their latest release RITMO, CARISMA Y SABOR by the salsa-rap artist EL DANDY. Also, in 1997, Mr.Rivas, along with writer Luis Santeiro, was a recipient of the Richard Rodgers Award for the musical-theater piece in progress: Barrio Babies. At the same time he pursues a commercial career in music Mr. Rivas continues to write classical music, poetry and short stories.