Canadian composer, Erick Flores’ works have been performed in venues such as the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Cadogan Hall in London, the Yamaha Hall in New York, and the Pollack Hall and Tanna Schulich Halls in Montreal.  His music has been featured at the Aldeburgh Music Festival, the Tête à Tête Opera Festival and Brighton Soundwaves Festival and broadcasted on the BBC Radio 3. 

 

Erick Flores has lived in London since 2007 to pursuit postgraduate studies in composition at the Royal College of Music. Since then, Flores’ works have been performed by orchestras such as the London Philharmonic Orchestra and L’Orchestre Philarmonique de Radio France, Toronto Symphony Orchestra and ensembles such as The New Perspectives Ensemble, The Mercury Quartet, the CHROMA Ensemble, BBC Singers and also by virtuoso young pianists such as Antoine Françoise, Katherine Tinker, Michael Ierace and Martin Karliçek, and by singers such as American soprano Pamela Stein among others in various venues in North America and Europe. 

 

In 2008, Flores attended the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme where he worked under supervision of composer Jonathan Harvey and wrote his most performed work L’ intérieur bleu [written for piano and electronics] which was premiered at the Aldeburgh Music Festival by virtuoso pianist Sarah Nicolls and Sound Intermedia.

 

Flores' ouvre includes a large amount of piano works, orchestral, chamber and electroacoustic works. His series of works named L' intérieur ( . . . ) have become his most performed works. For these works, Flores has collaborated in several occasions with pioneer English composer Michael Oliva. His opera . . . and the Crowd (wept), based on the libretto by Afsaneh Gray about the life of Big Brother's participant Jade Goody, gained national attention in the UK with some controversy. However it was received with positive approval by the public and media. 

 

Flores’ early beginnings started with the guitar when he performed his first recital at the age of seven. However, he never continued his musical training until many years later. At the age of seventeen, Flores started keyboard lessons, and two years later, after practicing Mozart’s sonatas and Chopin’s Polonaises on a toy-keyboard and without previously having played on a piano, Flores decided to audition for a place to study piano performance in university. The results were, as expected, disastrous. Nevertheless, after having lessons with prestigious American pianist Patricia Greenfield, Flores won the Symphony Award from the Kamloops Symphony Orchestra in British Columbia for performance and later obtained a place at McGill University in Montreal auditioning with his own piano works alongside Mozart’s and Chopin’s. There, he studied piano with virtuoso Georgian pianist Mme. Marina Mdivani and composition with Canadian composer Chris Paul Harman.

 

Flores has received a number of awards throughout the years such as an Honorary Mention from the Jean Coulthard Composition in Victoria, Canada, the Adrian Cruft Prize, the Sound of Perfume Prize, the Royal College of Music Director's Award and has been previously chosen one of the Royal College of Music's 'Rising Stars'. His studies have been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and most recently by the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund.

 

Most recently, Flores received his Doctorate in Music from the Royal College of Music studying with Kenneth Hesketh and William Mival.  He is now an active piano and composition teacher in London, UK, taking part in musical projects which have taken him to venues such as the Carnegie Hall in New York. He is also currently revising and recording all of his piano works which expand almost two decades from 1999 to the present.