VILLANUEVA, Maria Cecilia

María Cecilia Villanueva is an Argentine composer and pianist.

Villanueva took piano lessons in her hometown with Leticia Corral and from 1977 to 1985 in Buenos Aires with Elisabeth Westerkamp and gave numerous concerts as a piano soloist in Argentina. From 1983 to 1989 she studied composition at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata with Mariano Etkin. In 1989 and 1990 she took part in the summer workshop Camping Musical de Bariloche under the direction of Gerardo Gandini, and in 1993 in the composition workshop of Nicolaus A. Huber organized by the Goethe-Institut of Montevideo. This was followed by stays at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart (1994–95), at the Künstlerhof Schreyahn (1996) and at the Künstlerdorf Schöppingen (2003). Since 1994 she has been teaching composition at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, and in 1998 and 1999 she gave composition seminars at the Universidad de la República in Montevideo.

Villanueva's compositions have been performed at numerous festivals and concert series for new music in Europe and South America. She has received composition commissions for the Donaueschingen Music Festival (1996) and the Music Biennale Berlin (1997), from the Freiburg Percussion Ensemble and the Hanoverian Society for Contemporary Music (2001) as well as the Rümlingen Festival in Switzerland in 1997 and 1999.