Works performed by Earplay:

El Castillo Interior: The Interior Castle

Carla Lucero is originally from Los Angeles and graduated from CalArts in 1986 with a BFA in Composition. After college, Carla became the Director of Music at Hal Roach Studios in Hollywood. She spent 5 years as a composer in residence at Collage Dance Theater, during which time she won the Lester Horton award for Best Composition in a Dance Production.

Carla's love of opera and classical music drew her to San Francisco, where her first opera Wuornos was produced and then premiered on the Main Stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2001, under the baton of Music Director Mary Chun, with Joseph Graves as Stage Director. Her second opera Juana premiered at Theater Artaud in 2007, under the musical direction of Ron Valentino and Stage Director Tracy Ward.

In the last 8 years, her work has been performed in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Mexico City (Mexico), Madrid (Spain), Havana (Cuba), and Alberta (Canada), among other cities in these countries. She is also the U.S. Director for the international music consortium ComuArte.

After the premiere of El Castillo Interior: The Interior Castle, the Earplay commission to commemorate their glorious 30 years of making incredible music, Carla will return to her work on her third opera about Helen Keller and on a Mexican film score for the feature film Juana de Asbaje, based on the same historical figure, Sor Juana, as her opera Juana .

Carla is on the faculty of Academy of Art University, teaching music theory, composition, and orchestration in the Music for Visual Media Department. She also teaches for the San Francisco Opera and for New Traditions, an arts magnet school in San Francisco.

Carla Lucero has received awards and commissions from San Francisco Arts Commission, la Festival Contemporania de Habana (Contemporary Music Festival of Havana, Cuba), California Arts Council, Creative Work Fund, the Zellerbach Foundation, the Getty Foundation, Meet the Composer, Charles Schwab, Wells Fargo, OUT Magazine, the Advocate, ComuArte, International, Theater Bay Area, the Mexico City Philharmonic, Orquesta del Instituto Politécnico, and many others. Two recent compilation DVDs with Carla's work have been commercially released on the Murmullo de Sirenas label in Mexico City for greater Latin America.

Carla currently resides in Napa, California with her partner Jenna Pollock and their sassy Siamese, Gus.