BIOGRAPHY

“I am not going to be a musician when I grow up:” An announcement that Nathan Wright Bueno de Mesquita made in the presence of his musician parents and their friends at the age of five. Since abandoning his pledge, Sinaloa-born composer Nathan Wright Bueno de Mesquita has been writing colorful, expressive, and clearly structured music inspired by Jewish folk music, jazz harmony, and on one occasion, fungi. 

 

Most recently, he was commissioned by the American Youth Philharmonic Orchestras, culminating in the premiere of his chamber orchestra piece Sephardic Dance in May of 2025. Sephardic Dance is a colorful setting of the Sephardic Jewish folk song Puncha, Puncha structured as a contemporary take on ritornello form. In 2023, his wind quintet Jewish Folk Song Suite No. 2 was featured by the Nu Quintet at the DiMenna Center for Classical Music. While attending the SoundSCAPE music festival in Switzerland, Tony Arnold premiered his song cycle Four James Joyce Poems. At SoundSCAPE, Nathan also engaged in individual lessons with Tonia Ko, Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez, and Judith Ring.  

 

Nathan’s main compositional interests are chamber music and art song. As an avid reader, the connection between literature and music in art song comes naturally to him. He is particularly passionate about Spanish texts, setting the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Federico García Lorca. Nathan’s chamber music interests focus on wind and string chamber music, following his experiences as a horn player in woodwind quintets. He has written three wind quintets, including a set of character pieces entitled Six Mycological Miniatures. 

 

Nathan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in music from SUNY Fredonia, where he studied with Paul Coleman, Andrew Martin Smith, and Rob Deemer, and participated in masterclasses with Chen Yi, Valerie Colman, Jennifer Higdon, and Vivian Fung. In his final year at Fredonia, he won both the Fredonia Composition Competition and the Laureate Prize. He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Composition at the Peabody Conservatory under the instruction of Felipe Lara.