About

Our mission, as Belt & Ramirez, is to carve out a space for the guitar and oboe, which means studying the few great pieces written for our instrumentation and commissioning new work. Our first commission has just been completed by composer Joe Di Ponio; we premiered it on April 11th, 2015 at the brand new, half-a-billion-dollar performing arts center in our hometown of Orlando, the Doctor Phillps Center for Performing Arts. The piece is for electric guitar, oboe, and live electronics controlled with a foot pedal. We're really excited to show it off in New York this year.

Beatriz is the “Ramirez” in Belt & Ramirez. Her principal teachers were David Bourns, Jamie Strefeler, and Stephen Taylor, who supervised her graduate studies as a scholarship student at Manhattan School of Music. Her mother is from Cuba and her father from Nicaragua, but at a molecular level she is Floridian. She loves heat, humidity, writing electronic music, playing the ukulele, and keeping up with Kardashians, house wives, and Targaryans.

By logical deduction, you’ve guessed that Chris is the Belt of Belt & Ramirez. His principal guitar teacher was Eladio Scharrón, but he has performed in masterclasses for and taken lessons with many leading guitarists in the US and Europe. Seems silly to list their names here. Recent performances include the Society for Electroacoustic Music in the US and an appearance with Contemporaneous at the MATA Festival in Brooklyn. Chris has also played electric guitar in bands like The Sugar Oaks and Night Fishing. He watches a lot of shows where people punch and kick each other and say snappy but predictable one-liners.

Music

Adams, J.S. - Sonata (commissioned by Belt & Ramirez)
Coste - Le Montagnard
Di Ponio, Joseph - Homagge a... (commissioned by Belt & Ramirez)
Duckworth - An Imaginary Death Dance
Evans, Nat - New Domestic Ritual (commissioned by Belt & Ramirez)
Faure - Pavane, Sicilienne
Iannarelli - Hommagio a Fellini
Ibert - Entr-Acte
Lutoslawski - Bucolics
Pärt - Spiegel im Spiegel
Piazzolla - Histoire du Tango
Ravel - Piece en Forme de Habanera
Schumann - Three Romances
Villa-Lobos - Bachiana Brasileira No. 5

Audio

Past groupmuses (4)