Carlos Molina
MIAMI CLASSICAL GUITAR FOUNDATION FOUNDER AND PRESIDENT
Carlos Molina began his performing career in 1969, after graduating from the National Conservatory and the School of Law at the University of Havana. The following year, he won the National Guitar Competition in Cuba, and his first tour of Europe followed. Since then, he has been performing worldwide, offering concerts in more than twenty countries: Cuba, the United States, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Germany, Greece, Sweden, Switzerland, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Russia, Lithuania, Mexico, Martinique, Canada, Santo Domingo, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Venezuela.
Molina has shared concerts with guitarists such as Leo Brouwer, Turibio Santos, Alirio Díaz, Benjamin Verdery, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, and Nikita Koshkin. He has been featured at international guitar festivals, including those in Pescara, Potenza, Brno, Rust, Córdoba, Hondarribia, Vélez-Málaga, Aranda del Duero, Linares, Coria, Bordeaux, Limousin, Vendôme, Stockholm, Fribourg, Rotenburg, Esztergom, Bratislava, and La Habana.
In 1968, Cuban composer/guitarist Leo Brouwer dedicated Molina the “Canticum.” Other notable composers, such as the Russian composer Nikita Koshkin, have also dedicated him pieces, such as the duet “Returning of the Winds,” which they both premiered in Miami.
Carlos Molina began teaching at the National Conservatory in Havana in 1969. In 1976, he was appointed to the Superior Institute of the Arts. Since 1983, he has been on the faculty of Miami-Dade College. In 1987 he initiated the guitar program at Florida International University. In that same year he also founded the Miami Classical Guitar Society, one of the most active societies in the country.
Molina offers master classes every year in Europe. He has also been on the faculty of the National Guitar Summer Workshop in Connecticut. Molina has been juror for international guitar competitions of the Guitar Foundation of America in Oberlin University, Mérida, La Jolla, Houston, Québec, and San Antonio. He has been invited to judge in Bari, Italy, UTD in Dallas, Rust, Austria, and in Coria, Spain in several occasions.
In 1976, he organized the first guitar festival in Cuba. In 1991 and in 2002, he was appointed director of the Guitar Foundation of America’s International Convention and Competition, in Miami, Florida. In 2004, he organized the First International Guitar Competition of Miami.
Carlos Molina is featured in the Diccionario de la Música Española e Hispanoamericana, (Madrid, Spain) the Guitar Lexicon, by Josef Powrozniak (Poland 1976), Música Cubana, by Cristobal Diaz Ayala (Puerto Rico 1981), and the Diccionario de la Música Cubana, by Helio Orovio (Colombia, 1993). In 1996, the Board of County Commissioners of Miami-Dade declared the 31 of May as the “Day of Maestro Carlos Molina".
Additional Information