Jorge Wilson Price

Jorge Wilson Price was a Colombian music educator born and died in Bogotá, whose work is key to understanding the institutionalisation of music teaching in Colombia during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The son of the composer and painter Henry Price, who was born in London, he lived with his family in New York from 1855 until, after his father's death in 1863, his mother brought him back to Bogotá in 1864.

Once he had completed his studies in the capital, he combined a career in business, from 1869 to 1889, with his dedication to music. With the backing of a grant awarded by President Rafael Núñez, he founded the National Academy of Music on 22 February 1882, which from 1910 was renamed the National Conservatory of Music. He served as its director between 1882 and 1899, and again in 1909 and 1910; during this period he translated seven texts by authors such as Stainer, Cummings, Pauer and Ridley Prentice, and in 1889 he established the title of Master in Music.

After his retirement, he published a valuable synthesis of the events that led to the creation of the academy. His method for brass instruments, of 72 pages (1882), and his treatise on acoustics, of 126 pages (1897), were pioneering works in the Spanish language.