Casablancas, Benet

Musically trained in Barcelona and Vienna (F. Cerha and K-H. Füssel), he also graduated in philosophy and earned a doctorate in musicology at the Universitat Autònoma of Barcelona. His works have received recognition on the international level (City of Barcelona Prize, New York’s Musician’s Accord, Spain’s National Album Award, Amsterdam’s Composer’s Arena, finalist for the Prix Prince Pierre de Monaco, among others) and have been performed throughout Europe, and in the United States, Canada, Japan, Latin America and Egypt by prestigious ensembles such as the London Sinfonietta, Ensemble Contemporain de Montréal, Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, the national orchestras of Spain and Belgium, Arditti Cuarteto, Deutsches Kammerphilharmonie and the London Philharmonic; at venues such as the Musikverein Wien, London Barbican, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan Hall and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels.
He made his debut in 2008 with the BBC Symphony Orchestra and his New Epigrams represented Spain at the ISCM World Music Days in Vilnius. He has been invited to the 2011 Music Biennale Zagreb and as visiting composer to the 2011 Cairo Contemporary Music Days. In 2007 he was awarded the Generalitat of Catalonia’s National Music Prize. Author of the book “Humour in Music” (Reichenberger) and numerous articles on musicology (published in New Grove, Arietta, Quodlibet), he has acted as head of musical theory at various teaching centres, head of curriculum at JONC and as a lecturer at Universitat Pompeu Fabra. He is also invited regularly as guest judge and lecturer at many international events. In 2002 he took the reins of the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu. His extensive musical production is the fruit of a search for radical personal and aesthetic independence, and has been widely acclaimed for the balance achieved between structural integrity, on the one hand, and expressive strength, dramatic character and playful register, on the other; all as part of a musical discourse made up of brilliant harmonic language, rhythmic intensity, increasing tonal differentiation and instrumental virtuosity. Recently, he has released six new albums (with Naxos, Stradivarius, Tritó and Anemos). His latest endeavours include commissions from the Miller Theatre in New York (Composers Portrait), Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra, Maastricht´s Ensemble 88, Ensemble Cantus Zagreb and Tokyo Sinfonietta.