Among other honors, Frank Duarte was awarded the Aguila Award for MSU Student of the Year at the César Chávez and Dolores Huerta Commemorative Celebration in 2024.
Award-winning composer and conductor Frank Duarte has worked from modest beginnings to being on the verge of completing his doctorate at the Michigan State University College of Music. His journey is one of perseverance and creative opportunities that highlights the importance of funding for fellowships and scholarships in nurturing future music professionals.
Duarte’s early life in Santa Ana, California, was shaped by his Indigenous Mexican (Zapotec) maternal family. His mother, who arrived in the U.S. as a teenager, worked as a babysitter and sold items at flea markets before becoming a medical assistant, and his father worked in a restaurant before becoming a truck driver and finally in law enforcement. They instilled in him the value of hard work and perseverance.
“I was able to learn how hard it is to earn a dollar,” Duarte said. “When I was a little kid, my mother always said ‘this is how you do things. This is how you can make money off that can in the street.’ And I remember, when I was in high school, picking up cans from the street and using that money to, I don’t know, buy something for my trumpet.”
His best option out of high school was to attend community college, so Duarte began at Fullerton College. He earned an associate degree in music and then attended California State University, Northridge, where he majored in composition. After graduating in 2013, Duarte pursued a Master of Music degree in composition at Butler University, where he found his voice as a composer.
Frank Duarte, with visiting composer Gabriela Ortiz, was one of 12 selected composers to be part of the 2024 cohort for the Gabriela Ortiz Composition Studio by OAcademy, in partnership with the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University.
In 2021, after four applications, Duarte was admitted to MSU as a Doctor of Musical Arts candidate in the Composition Area, thanks to a University Enrichment Fellowship that covered his costs. He said he was persistent in applying was because the College of Music was his first-choice school, and the fact that he is here and having success highlights the importance of funding for students.
“Funding, especially at the graduate level, is so important,” he emphasized. “Some people are coming in with their families, like a colleague who is one of my very good friends, Henry Dorn. He had to bring his wife and daughter in order to study here, and I’m not sure how that’s possible without the financial support.”
MSU Professor of Composition Ricardo Lorenz led the nomination of Duarte for the fellowship because he understood its significance.
“The Composition faculty saw in Frank not only artistic vision but also a unique background and set of skills that complemented the student makeup at that time, significantly enriching our area,” Lorenz said.
In Hollander Hall at the MSU College of Music, Frank Duarte conducts a choral reading he initiated of his work “Una Rosa Blanca.”
One of the ways Duarte has enriched the MSU Music community is through the establishment of a Choral Reading Session as an additional opportunity for composers to have their music read or recorded. When he arrived at MSU, there were no readings set up in the choral area for composers, so he initiated a conversation with MSU Professor of Choral Conducting and Director of Choral Programs Sandra Snow.
“I took that initial conversation as a segue to further discussion and connected both the Choral and Composition areas. I was very happy that both faculties supported my idea, and I am hoping that this opportunity that I created, not for me but for others, will continue to exist in the College of Music long after I leave the University,” Duarte explained.
In this and other ways, Duarte has thrived at MSU. He earned the MSU Student of the Year Award in 2024, and his work Yag Naban won the American Prize in Composition and the University of North Carolina-Greensboro’s Indigenous Composer Choral Competition. He became the first Latino, Mexican American, and Oaxacan Zapotec Indigenous composer to win the American Prize in the Major Choral Works category. Professor Lorenz has been there to witness it all.
“I experienced the benefits of having Frank in our program in his first year during our applied lessons. At that time, we worked on his mixed choir composition titled Yag Naban, a setting of his own poem which he painstakingly translated into his grandfather’s Zapotec language,” Lorenz said. “I learned about an indigenous language I knew little about while watching videos Frank made of his grandfather speaking Zapotec, enabling him to capture the correct pronunciation of words and decide on the best way to notate them on the score. Attending MSU allowed Frank to reconnect and engage musically with his own indigenous heritage in a profound way.”
In 2022, The Spartan Marching Band, alongside the Michigan State Dance Team, performed a musical arrangement by Frank Duarte during a halftime show against Akron University.
Duarte said he has benefitted from the supportive environment and professionalism of the MSU faculty and opportunities such as arranging for the Spartan Marching Band and other ensembles in the College.
“I was honored as MSU Student of the Year and received the Aguila Award at the César E. Chávez and Dolores Huerta Commemorative Celebration at MSU,” Duarte shared. “I am still filled with emotions, as I was celebrated among students, faculty, staff, community members, and administration.”
He credits his parents for teaching him the value of hard work.
“The moral of the story is, my parents never knew how to give up, so I never gave up. And because I never gave up, I’m here at Michigan State, and I’m very happy,” he said. “I have been blessed every day since I’ve been here. A lot of people want to go to their Harvards, their Yales, and their Juilliards, but this was kind of my Harvard. This was the place I wanted to be.”
Frank Duarte’s journey from modest beginnings to becoming a celebrated composer at MSU is a testament to his perseverance and the support he received from the university. His story underscores the importance of private funding for fellowships and scholarships, which enable talented students to pursue their dreams and contribute to the future of music. He embodies the Spartans Will philosophy of MSU, and he has his own unique way of summing up what that means.
“MSU is a great place to never give up,” Duarte said. “And if you try to give up, there’s a lot of good people here that will give you praise to get back up and keep going. So, I intend to keep going.”
