“Amo” is a work full of lush, romantic harmonies that beautifully express the complex inner life and ambiguous meaning of its simple, direct text. This piece takes singers and audiences on a deep emotional journey and is impossible to listen to without being moved. The journey is anchored by the honesty of the text and the composer’s heartfelt musical setting.

Composer’s Notes

The text of “Amo” was written by the composer’s great-grandfather, Mariano Melendro Serna, who was governor of Tolima in Colombia. Many of his poems are about missing home and his family because he often had to travel to the capital, Bogotá, for work. This piece is meant to be performed with ample rubato and with a lush, full sound, paying attention to the ways in which the composer’s voicings and harmonies highlight both the explicit and implicit meaning in the text and the complex inner life of the narrator. The original Spanish text of “Amo” can have an ambiguous meaning; does it refer to being in love with the memories themselves or with the loved ones that are no longer there?
– Ahmed Anzaldúa

Described as, “a young musical promise” (La Vanguardia) Nico Gutierrez is a composer that consistently writes powerful, lush music for both multimedia and concert audiences. Born to Colombian parents, Nico embraces his heritage and infuses elements of his cultural upbringing into his music. An ambassador of Latin-American music, Nico has served as composer in residence for the Barcelona Festival of Song in both 2014 and 2019. In March of 2018, Nico was invited to conduct his compositions with the Youth Orchestra of Centro Fox in Guanajuato, Mexico for Former President of Mexico, Vicente Fox Quesada. Nico was nominated for Best Overall Composition in the 2019 Long Composition Awards. As a multimedia composer, Nico has worked on several films and television series for A&E, CBS, CBS All Access, and companies like Huawei and Netflix.