On July 13, 2026, Pedro Ignacio Calderón died at the age of 92.

His death was announced by the Argentine Secretary of Culture, Leonardo Cifelli.

Born in Paraná, Entre Ríos, Argentina, on Dec. 31, 1933, Calderón enrolled in music lessons by his mother at the age of seven and at 13 went to Buenos Aires and began studying at the Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música.

He went on to train under such important musicians as  Alberto Ginastera who taught him composition and Vincenzo Scaramuzza, who taught him piano.

At 15, he conducted his first concert with the Entre Ríos Symphony Orchestra and conducted another concert when he was 16 in San Juan. At 20, he conducted the Orquesta Sinfónica de Radio Nacional and in 1955, he was hired at the Teatro Colón.

He would become the Principal Conductor of the National University of Tucumán’s Symphony Orchestra and 1960, he was given a grant by the Fondo Nacional de las Artes to study for a year at the Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, Italy.

In 1963 Calderón won an International Conducting Competition and began working as an assistant to Leonard Bernstein at the New York Philharmonic Orchestra for a year.

Calderón would return to Argentina where he founded the Ensemble Musical de Buenos Aires in 1966 and group played both popular and chamber music and performed on television.

Calderón also worked with the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires where he conducted for over 25 years. He would become Artistic and General Director of the Buenos Aires Philharmonic orchestra. In 1994, he moved to the Argentine National Symphony Orchestra to work as their conductor.

The conductor retired from the National Symphony Orchestra in 2015, after over twenty years.

Outside of his work in Argentina, Calderón conducted such notable orchestras as the Leningrad Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestre national du Capitole de Toulouse, the Orchestre national de Lille, the Pasdeloup Orchestra, the RTVE Symphony Orchestra, the Spanish National Orchestra, the Tchaikovsky Symphony Orchestra, and the Tonkünstler Orchestra.

For his work, he received many awards including the Konex Merit Diploma from the Konex Foundation Awards in 1989 and the Platinum award in 1999.