Saturday, February 19, 2022
7:30 pm EST
WPAC Concert Hall
$15 general, $10 senior/FIU faculty, staff, & alumni, $5 student
2022 MIGF Festival Pass
is available to attend all festival events at a single reduced price: $100 general, $70 senior/FIU faculty, staff, & alumni, $30 student
Cuban classical guitarist Susana Frade Machado has been a member of several guitar ensembles, such as Sonantas Habaneras guitar orchestra (2005-2014), Cuarteto Guitarras de La Habana, Duo Con-Trastes (2010- 2018), and Duo Morningstar since 2019.
Born in Havana, Ms. Frade started to play the guitar at the age of 10 at Manuel Saumell Music Conservatory and continued her studies at Amadeo Roldan Music Conservatory. Frade holds a master’s degree from UTSA and a bachelor’s degree in Music with a major in guitar performance from Instituto Superior de Arte in Cuba. She is a second-year Doctoral student at Florida State University, Member of the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, the Hispanic Graduate Student Association, and the FSU Classical Guitar Society. She has attended classes from Isaac Bustos, Matthew Dunne, Leo Brouwer, Joaquín Clerch, Ricardo Gallén, and Bruce Holzman, among others.
Frade has performed at Cuban international festivals, including Identidades, International Guitar Festival of Havana, Festival of Contemporary Music and International Chamber Music Festivals. She was finalist in the 2020 Ex-Aequo International Classical Guitar Competition. With Morningstar duo, she performed at the 2020 Southwest Guitar Symposium at UTSA. She participated in the Texas A&M International Guitar Symposium and Competition, and the 2019 GFA Convention and Competition.
As a soloist, Frade performed in 2019 in High schools and College in Brownsville, Texas and at the Zihuatanejo International Guitar Festival in Mexico. She performed at the 2021 Miami International Virtual GuitART Festival, and the 2021 Prism Festival, that features students from Florida State’s top-ranked College of Music.
In 2014, she made a concert tour with Duo Con-Trastes in the South of France and performed a solo recital at the Paris’s American Cathedral. In 2017 she made another concert tour in France but this time with Cuarteto Guitarras de La Habana. Frade made a concert tour in Cuba as a soloist as part of the prize of the National Guitar Competition in 2010. She has played with several orchestras from Cuba including the Symphonic Orchestra from the Amadeo Roldán Music Conservatory conducted by Daiana García, Sonantas Habaneras guitar orchestra and the National Symphonic Orchestra of Cuba conducted by Enrique Pérez Mesa.
In 2012, she recorded solo and chamber music in “Jesus Ortega and Cuban Guitar” and “Cuban Landscape with Sonantas”, a double album with Sonantas Habaneras Guitar Orquestra. In 2014, Duo Con-Trastes recorded their first album “Contrastes”, and more recently, in 2018 recorded the second album “Retratos” with Latin-American music. Frade has performed the premiere of several works for guitar including Promenade á l’après-midi for two guitars composed by Ashley Lucero and Concierto para guitarra y orquesta composed by Björn Raithel in the International Guitar Festival of Havana, Cuba in 2018.
In 2020, she won several awards, including the Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi’s Love of Learning award, Outstanding Guitar Performance award at UTSA, and the 1st place at the 20th Annual COLFA Spring Research Conference in graduate category; she also received a Teaching Assistantship as a Doctoral student at Florida State University.
