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THE ITALIAN LEGACY IN THE DOMINICAN REPUBLIC
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department. There he formed an orchestra that was communal in its origins and later made up mostly of
students from the school.
He then resided in the city of Miami for several years and died on March 26, 2010 in a hospital in Port
Jervis, New York.
Arístides Incháustegui stated the following in a radio program dedicated to the memory of Carlos Piantini:
This unforgettable creator of music began his career as a young violinist in love with classical music,
who fought hard to transform the building of the National Theater in his own country into a true
national theater, the home to artists who would achieve the miracle of perfecting their skills for an
increasingly wide, receptive, and enthusiastic audience.
Dante Salvador Cucurullo Pérez
was born in San Juan de la Maguana on January 13, 1957. His ancestors
came from Santa Domenica Talao, Cosenza (Calabria).
He began his music studies under Dr. Dante Cucurullo, his father, and under the instructor Monina Cám-
pora de Piña. In 1971, he was awarded a scholarship by his teacher Manuel Rueda to continue piano studies at
the National Conservatory of Music in the city of Santo Domingo.
In 1981 he graduated with honors as a Teacher of Advanced Music Courses, with a specialization in Musi-
cal Composition, from the National Conservatory of Music, under the tutelage of maestro Manuel Simó. He
also obtained a teacher’s certificate in music, with a specialization in piano, and completed a baccalaureate in
Music (magna cum laude) from the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo. In 2019 he was professor of
Composition and Piano; director of the Punta Cana Academy of Music and Arts; and director of the Camerata
Infanto-Juvenil del Este-RD (Children’s Chamber Ensemble of Eastern Dominican Republic), the Chamber
Orchestra of Haina sponsored by the Refidomsa Foundation, and the musical programs of the Aula Cultural.
He has served as assistant director of the National Conservatory of Music, professor of Musical Composi-
tion and Fingering, founder and director of the Contemporary Philharmonic Orchestra, assistant director of
the National Symphony Orchestra, director of the Juan Pablo Duarte Symphony Orchestra of the Conservato-
ry, and a professor of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo for a period of three years.
Dante Cucurullo has participated in international festivals of electroacoustic music composition and or-
chestra conducting in Venezuela, Brazil, Uruguay, Cuba, Chile, the United States, and France.
He studied conducting under Álvaro Manzano (Ecuador) and Luis Gorelik (Argentina). He created and di-
rected the Manuel Simó Concert Season for 15 uninterrupted years. He has won seven national music awards,
including the José Reyes and three Talía de Plata awards as musical conductor, and has collaborated in the
creation of musical scores for plays.
As a composer, he has written works for piano, orchestra, solo orchestra, electroacoustic, and choral
works, as well as for ballet and performance. On August 6, 2018, he premiered his
Cantata a los Trinitarios
, in
an act of the Constitutional Court, and put into circulation an album with a selection of his symphonic com-
positions recorded live with the National Symphony Orchestra.
In 2019 he conducted at a concert titled
Clásicos Dominicanos del Siglo XX
(Twentieth-Century Dominican
Classics), sponsored by the Dominican Petroleum Refinery and as part of a large-scale project that aims to
preserve the symphonic repertoire of the Dominican Republic.
Italians in the Dominican Republic
The broadcasting station La Voz del Yuna—founded in Bonao by José Arismendi Trujillo Molina on August
1, 1942, and later relocated to the Dominican capital in May 1946—made changes to its usual programming
to adapt to new audiences. Among the proposed innovations was the sporadic participation of the National
Symphony Orchestra in its programming.