The Conservatori Liceu Foundation has received with sorrow the news of the death of violinist and pedagogue Mauricio Cristancho, member of an outstanding saga of Colombian musicians. He studied violin with great masters such as Ernesto Díaz, Edward Preodor (student of Carl Flesch), Alberto Lysy (student of Yehudy Menuhin) and Henryk Szeryng, and was a student of orchestral conducting with maestro Olav Roots. When he was only 18 years old, he joined the Colombian Symphony Orchestra, where he later became Assistant Concertmaster and Associate Concertmaster.
In 1972, together with his brother, he created the Centro de Orientación Musical Cristancho in Bogotá, an institution where many of today’s great Colombian musicians have been trained.
In 1984 he created the Cristancho Foundation, a non-profit organization that has organized numerous and very diverse musical activities, and under his initiative the Cristancho Cultural Center was also created in Iza (Boyacá), for the musical education and cultural enrichment of the region, a pioneering work in Latin America.
Thanks to the initiative of Mauricio Cristancho, the Conservatori Liceu Foundation and the Centro de Orientación Musical Cristancho (currently the School of Arts of the Universidad Sergio Arboleda), signed a first collaboration agreement in February 2002, which would be the first institutional agreement of the Conservatori Liceu in Colombia and which would give rise to the Iberoamerican Collaboration Program, a program that has been extended to eight Latin American countries with more than 91 agreements signed. By virtue of this agreement numerous students from his school continued their studies at the Conservatori Liceu, and Mauricio Cristancho himself visited Barcelona on two occasions as a guest professor to offer violin master classes and lectures on Colombian music for students and teachers at our Center.
The Conservatori Liceu Foundation will remember him as an exceptional musician and person, with special gratitude and affection.