Conductor of the Barcelona Symphonic Band since 2018 and principal guest conductor of the Bilbao Municipal Band, where he served as music director from 2015 to 2025. Pascual-Vilaplana is also the principal associate conductor of the Portuguese Symphonic Band in Porto, with which he has worked since 2009. He studied wind band conducting under Jan Cober and Eugene Corporon, orchestral conducting in Vienna under Karl Österreicher, Yuji Yuhasa and Hans Graf, and harmony and composition under R. Alcaraz and J. Darias.
Pascual-Vilaplana has conducted numerous wind bands and orchestras across Europe and the Americas, including the national youth wind orchestras of the Netherlands and Colombia; the SAF Army Band of Slovenia; the municipal bands of Buenos Aires and Montevideo; the orchestra of the Accademia del Teatro La Fenice in Venice; the WASBE Youth Wind Band in San José, California; the AULOS Blasorchester in Switzerland; the Blasorchester der Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe in Germany; the symphony orchestras of Bilbao, Albacete and Murcia; the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria Philharmonic Orchestra; the Castilla y León Symphony Orchestra; the municipal bands of A Coruña, Alicante, Barcelona, Bilbao, Madrid, Palma de Mallorca, Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Santander, Santiago de Compostela, Valencia and Vitoria; the bands of the advanced conservatories of Oviedo, Granada, Jaén, A Coruña and the Canary Islands, and MUSIKENE in the Basque Country; the Gran Canaria Wind Orchestra; and the La Rioja Symphonic Band. He has worked with distinguished soloists such as Paquito D’Rivera, Sergei Nakariakov, Jörgen van Rijen, Asier Polo, Albert Guinovart, Esteban Batallán, Vincent David, Sérgio Carolino, Selina Ott, Manuel Blanco, Rubén Simeó, Marta Mathéu, Elisabete Matos and Estrella Morente. He has conducted the world premières of works by composers such as Luis de Pablo, Lleonard Balada, Hèctor Parra, José Mª Sánchez-Verdú, Gabriel Erkoreka, Agustí Charles, Enric Palomar, Salvador Brotons, Johan de Meij and Franco Cesarini. As a conductor, he has recorded around 30 albums for national and international record labels, as well as numerous releases for digital platforms such as L’Auditori Digital.
He has composed works for wind band, choir and dulzaina, as well as incidental and chamber music, and has received commissions from numerous festivals and renowned soloists. In 2006, his musical Balansiyyà premièred at Madrid’s Teatro Gran Vía, becoming the first work of its kind for wind band to be staged in Spain.
In 1997, he won first prize, the “Golden Baton”, at the WMC International Conductors’ Contest in Kerkrade, the Netherlands. In 2000, he won first prize on the “Roll of Honour” at the EBBA Conductors’ Competition in Birmingham, England. In 2004, he received the EUTERPE Award from the Federation of Musical Societies of the Valencian Community in the categories of Wind Band Conducting and Music Composition for Traditional Festivities. In 2010, he received the “Ignacio Morales Nieva” National Music Award at the Castilla-La Mancha Music Festival. In 2022, he received the MAITENA award for lifetime achievement in music from the Sociedad Coral de Bilbao.
