About Me
Sergio Barer is a Mexican-born composer and pianist whose music explores history, memory, cultural identity, and human experience through piano, choral, orchestral, and symphonic band works.
Born in Mexico City into a Jewish family, Barer studied piano in Mexico with Marcia Freyre and Marcia Freyre de Andrade, and later in the United States with Mario Feninger and Ian Brooks. He made his pianistic debut in Mexico in 1985, appearing in recitals and on television.
In the late 1980s, a serious injury to his left hand forced him to perform music for one hand for several years, a period documented in his recording Piano Music for One Hand. Through intensive work with Dorothy Taubman and Nina Scolnik, he eventually regained the ability to perform with both hands. This experience of loss, adaptation, and recovery would profoundly shape both his musical voice and artistic outlook.
In the 1990s, under the mentorship of pianist and composer Mario Feninger, Barer began composing. When he returned to public performance, he did so increasingly through his own music, developing a body of work distinguished by concept-driven structures, narrative cycles and strong literary, historical, and cultural influences, particularly those rooted in his Mexican and Jewish heritage.
His recordings include Almost Songs, praised by The Jamestown Post-Journal as “sensational listening,” and Memories of My Childhood, featuring both of his piano concerti. His First Piano Concerto was recorded in Kyiv as part of ERM Music’s Masterworks of the New Era series.
Encouraged by his friend, the late composer Stephen Paulus, Barer expanded into choral and large-scale vocal music. In 2017, Moses, an Oratorio—for SATB choir, soloists, narrator, and chamber orchestra—was premiered by the San Fernando Valley Master Chorale in Los Angeles, which named him Composer in Residence, a position he held until 2026.
In 2019, Barer received a McKnight Visiting Composer residency from the American Composers Forum, during which he composed The Immigrants, a four-movement choral cycle based on interviews with Mexican immigrants in Minneapolis. Although its live premiere was cancelled due to the COVID pandemic, the work was later recorded virtually and premiered on television in Mexico City.
In recent years, Barer has become increasingly interested in the expressive possibilities of symphonic band music. Seeking a broader palette of sonorities and harmonic colors, he was drawn to the contemporary repertoire for that instrumental ensemble. In 2025, he recorded three works for symphonic band in Los Angeles.
His latest musical adventure is Mamita, a work for mariachi and symphonic band inspired by the poetry of the Aztec king Netzahualcóyotl. Premiered in Alabama in 2026, the piece opens new possibilities for his creative voice and for the cultural communities his music can reach.
Barer’s catalog comprises 40 opuses and approximately 120 works, including piano cycles, concerti, chamber music, choral works, Jewish sacred music, orchestral works, and music for symphonic band. Across these diverse genres, his music consistently seeks to transform ideas, texts, memories, and lived experience into works that promote understanding, connection and emotional truth.