Born in Puerto Rico, Rowan Puig is a fourth-year student at Bard College, New York, where he is doing a double major in art history and double bass with Leigh Mesh. Puig was awarded a full scholarship to study with him Professor Mesh. Before Puig came to Bard, he completed his first year of college at the Conservatory of Music of Puerto Rico with Professor Maricarmen Rivera.
Puig began his musical career in 2010 in the program 100×35, a program inspired by “El Sistema de Orquesta de Venezuela.” In this program, he performed in the most important theaters of Puerto Rico, under the direction of Eddy Marcano, Karlo Flores and Roselin Pabón. Puig has been part of festivals such as Symphonic Experience, a festival of the Puerto Rico Symphony Orchestra, where he was chosen for two consecutive years to be assistant of the Principal Double Bassist. Puig was also part of the Dali Quartet Music Festival where he played with violinist Simon Gollo and members of the Dali Quartet including Adriana Linares, Carlos Rubio, and Jesus Morales.
Aside from his career as a classical musician, Mr. Puig has had experience with other musical genres such as jazz, blues, American Folk Music, Latin American Music, choral, and religious music. In 2015, Puig was part of the local Puerto Rican band Lethologica who played jazz and indie music at various venues such as Poet’s Passage, Carli’s Fine Bistro & Piano, and El Zipperle, where the band performed weekly.
As leader and performer, Puig had the opportunity to be a double bass teacher in the summers of 2016 and 2017 at the Classical Music Institute of San Antonio, Texas where he worked with musicians from Puerto Rico, South America, Mexico, Japan, and Spain. Aspiring for more leadership opportunities, in 2018 The Orchestra Now violinist Leonardo Pineda invited Puig to lead Cuerdas para Cali, an annual summer project in Cali, Colombia. The two-week project includes Bard students that teach and perform for Cali’s youth. Thanks to the Trustee Leader Scholar Program who created this program in 2014, Rowan continues to work with Cuerdas para Cali to inspire and support the youth of Colombia.
