Cergio Prudencio was a composer, director, researcher, and teacher. He studied Latin American Contemporary Music Courses at the Bolivian Catholic University and participated in the Venezuelan National Youth Orchestra. Prudencio studied under Carlos Rosso, Alberto Villalpando, Rubén Vartañán, Coriún Aharonian, and José Antonio Abreu. He also served as a resident composer in Australia (1996), Germany (2001), and Italy (2007), was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (2008/9), and has received assignments from the Perth Festival (Australia, 1996), the Pro Helvetia Foundation (Switzerland, 1997), the Donaueschingen Musiktage Festival (Germany, 1999), the TaG Ensemble (Switzerland, 2001), the Buenos Aires Contemporary Music Festival (2003), and the Klangspuren Festival (Austria, 2009).

Prudencio’s music establishes a dialogue between Andean and European avant-garde traditions. In 1980, Prudencio cofounded and directed the Experimental Orchestra of Indigenous Instruments (OEIN): an ideological, musical, and pedagogical project that asserts the Aimara music tradition from the Bolivian Altiplano by means of a contemporary expression. OEIN’s program links local materials and forms to procedural techniques from avant-garde contemporary music. The OEIN has achieved wide international renown, performing in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and Colombia, as well as Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Australia, Italy, and Korea.