Sergio Barroso studied at the Havana National Conservatory, the Prague Superior School of Music (AMU) and at CCRMA Stanford University in California. His music, described as having a dramatic character with emphasis in color and rhythm, has received several awards including the 2000 Lynch-Staunton national composition award from the Canada Council for the Arts, 1999 Cintas Foundation Award (USA), IMC Rostrums of Composers (Paris, 1995 & 1980), Rostrums of Electroacoustic Music (Helsinki, 1994; Oslo, 1990), and Rostrum of Latin American Music (Colombia, 1979), as well as Cuban national awards for chamber music (1973 & 1974), symphonic and choral music (1974) and electronic music (1979). After an intense decade of artistic, academic, media and administrative work in Cuba, Barroso migrated to Canada in 1980. His production includes orchestral, chamber, choral, electroacoustic, stage, multimedia, and film scores.

Strongly influenced by the cultural heritage of his native country Barroso’s works have been extensively performed in the Americas, Europe and Asia, including the MET Lincoln Center (New York), the Kennedy Centre (Washington D.C.), San Francisco, Warsaw and Budapest Opera, Monte-Carlo Theatre, National Arts Center (Ottawa), Ircam (Paris), Prague Smétana Hall, Madrid Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Bratislava Philharmonic Hall (Slovakia), South Bank Centre (London), Manila National Theatre, as well as several Warsaw Autumn, Alicante, ISCM, Manuel de Falla festivals and International Forums of New Music in Mexico City among others. Barroso’s music has been published by Centerdisc, SNE, Empreintes Digitales, Blue Note, Bonk, Radio Canada International, and Areito. Highly regarded as a synthesist he frequently performs in Canada and abroad.

Crónicas II was inspired by the poetic unrealism and polylyricism of the unique Catalan and major Hispanic writer J.V.Foix (1894-1987) last work Croniques de l’ultrason (1985). A version of a previous work, Crónicas de Ultrasueño for oboe and keyboard controlled FM synthesizers, Crónicas II is scored for solo viola and a similar live electronics setup as the former. The piece was conceived in three uninterrupted sections that seek to bind together with an introspective flavor such opposites as concrete and abstract, old and new, reality and unreality found in Foix book. The viola part interplays with the polymicrotonal sound colors of the live electronics along a linear path of increasing complex drama. The present is a live performance at the Toronto Music Gallery in 1997 produced by David Jaeger with recording engineer David Quinley. Final edit by Sergio Barroso in the spring of 2009.