Architect. Juan Orrego-Salas was formed as a musician at the Universidad de Chile (University of Chile), where he studied under the guidance of Pedro Humberto Allende and Domingo Santa Cruz. Later, he travels to the United States, with a Rockefeller and Guggenheim Foundations scholarship, where he studied composition with Randal Thompson and Aaron Copland and musicology with Paul Henry Lang. He directed for many years the Latin-American Music Center of Indiana University. He has been internationally recognized as one of the most powerful influences in the musical life of Chile. Among the enormous amounts of prizes he has been awarded it is important to mention the Premio Nacional de Arte (National Prize of Arts), awarded in Chile in 1992.

Among his great works, he has composed for the Quilapayun quintet: 'Canto para Bolivar' (Song for Bolivar) and a second, unpublished one: 'Lo que no digo lo canto'. (What I do not say, I sing).