Bio

“del Pino’s vision is ethereal, yet heavy, distinguished, yet humble—and always beautiful.”

— Classical Post

Francisco del Pino is an Argentine composer and guitarist with an affinity for music that is meticulous, expressive and patient. He works with pattern and process to create works of emotional intensity through orderly structures, frequently exploring themes of memory and identity by linking music, poetry and archive. Francisco is currently based in Princeton, NJ, where he is a doctoral fellow in composition at Princeton University. 

His work has been performed by leading artists such as Attacca Quartet, Black Pencil Ensemble, Dogs of Desire, International Contemporary Ensemble, Hub New Music, loadbang, Nuntempe Ensamble, Platypus Ensemble, percussionist Ayano Kataoka and shakuhachi grand master Riley Lee, and has been featured at venues and festivals such as Bang on a Can, MATA (US), ISCM World Music Days (South Korea), St John’s Smith Square (UK), Summartónar (Faroe Islands), Sirga Festival (Catalonia), Druskomanija (Lithuania), Guitarras del Mundo, CETC Teatro Colón and Festival Nueva Ópera Buenos Aires (Argentina). Commissions have come from the Albany Symphony, Chamber Choir Ireland, Ithaca College, the Argentinian Ministry of Culture, TACEC-Teatro Argentino de La Plata and guitarist Nicolò Spera, among others. 

Francisco has a long-standing collaboration with Argentine poet Victoria Cóccaro, with four works to date including a 75-minute opera (La astilla de hueso, 2024) and two albums: Decir (New Amsterdam, 2021), hailed by Bandcamp Daily as “a stunning art-song hybrid”, and The Sea (Notice Recordings, 2025), a collaboration with vocalist Charlotte Mundy described by Night After Night as “an utter treasure”. 

Francisco is a winner of the first International Jean Sibelius Composition Competition, where his piece Jardín de lágrimas, awarded by a world-class jury chaired by Kaija Saariaho, was a compulsory piece for the 2015 edition of the Sibelius Violin Competition. Further international honors include first prizes at competitions in Paris (Viola’s 2014 Composition Contest, AFEA), Antwerp (Sorodha Composition Competition, 2014) and Moscow (Tchaikovsky Conservatory Composition Competition, 2013). More recently, he was a finalist for the Black Pencil Prize at the Festival Annelie de Man (Amsterdam, 2025). 

As a chamber musician, Francisco has collaborated with Dither, ICE-Ensemble Evolution, ~Nois Saxophone Quartet and Sō Percussion, among many others. His project alba par, with vocalist Clara Elena Montes, investigates the crossroads of medieval and renaissance chansons and contemporary song genres. 

Francisco studied composition in Argentina with Fernando Maglia and Gerardo Gandini, and took further lessons and masterclasses with Mariano Etkin, Stefano Gervasoni, Wim Henderickx, Claus-Steffen Mahnkopf, Kaija Saariaho and Toivo Tulev. He holds a BAMus from the Universidad Nacional de las Artes (Argentina), where he also taught counterpoint, music notation and composition before relocating to the US, and an MFA from Princeton University, where he is currently a Ph.D. candidate in the Music Department under the advice of Dan Trueman and a fellow in the Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program in the Humanities.