Cáceres, German (b. July 9, 1954, San Salvador). Salvadoran composer of mostly orchestral, chamber, vocal, and piano works that have been performed throughout the Americas and in Europe; he is also active as a conductor.

Dr. Cáceres studied counterpoint, harmony and musical forms privately with Esteban Servellón from 1969-71 and Ion Cubicec from 1971-73 and conducting privately with Ricardo del Carmen in 1978-79 and Alejandro Muñoz Ciudad Real in 1979-80. He studied chamber music and oboe with Ronald Roseman and composition with David Diamond and Stanley Wolfe at the Juilliard School of Music from 1973-78, where he earned both his BMus and MMus, and studied composition privately with Julián Orbón and conducting with José Serebrier while in New York. He finished his studies with Jonathan D. Kramer at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music from 1987-89 and there earned his DMA.

Among his many honors are the Guggenheim Fellowship (1981), the Premio Nacional de Cultura (1982), the Internationaler Gertrud-Ramdohr-Preis in Hamburg (1986), four grants from Meet the Composer (1986-87, 1990, 1994), the Fulbright Foundation Fellowship (1987-89), and the Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship (1991). More recently, he received the Premio XX Siglo at the Tribuna de la Música Latinoamericana in Argentina (1997, for Fantasía sobre una Cadencia de Gesualdo) and was named Músico del Año by the Unión de Artistas y Escritores Salvadoreños (1999). In addition, he served as honorary president of the string festival in Gosau/Dachstein in Austria (1987) and represented El Salvador at the Foro Interamericano de Directores de Orquesta in Caracas (1988).

He was named a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the government of France (1992), a Compositor y Director de Orquesta Distinguido de El Salvador by the congress of El Salvador (1999) and an artist of the Ordem do Rio Branco by the government of Brazil (1999). He is a member of the Ateneo de El Salvador, the Centro Cultural Salvadoreño, the Colegio de Compositores Latinoamericanos de Música de Arte in Mexico, the Fundación Julia Díaz, the Instituto Bolivariano, the Instituto Masferreriano, and the Instituto Sanmartiniano. In addition, he has been an honorary member of the Research Board of Advisors of the American Biographical Institute since 1999.

His works have been performed at numerous major festivals in Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Costa Rica, Cuba, the Czech Republic, El Salvador, France, Germany, Guatemala, Honduras, Israel, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Romania, Spain, Uruguay, the USA, and Venezuela. A portrait concert was given at California State University at Northridge in 2001.

Dr. Cáceres is also active in other positions. He founded the Festival de Música Contemporánea de El Salvador in 1996 and has since served as its music director. He also served as director of the program Música del nuestro tiempo on Radio Clásica in El Salvador from 1997-99. As a writer, he has written numerous articles about Latin-American music and other topics.

As a conductor, he served as conductor of the Orquesta de Cámara de El Salvador from 1979-83 and as music director and principal conductor of the Orquesta Sinfónica de El Salvador from 1985-99 and has again served as its music director and principal conductor since 2002. He has guest-conducted ensembles and orchestras in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Romania, Spain, Switzerland, Uruguay, the USA, and Venezuela.

He taught music history at the Universidad Centroamericana José Simeón Cañas in San Salvador from 1993-2002 and served as Director del Arte y Cultura at the Universidad de El Salvador from 2000-02. He lectured at California State University at Northridge and the University of Southern California at Los Angeles in 2001.