BIOGRAPHY

Despite completing his guitar career, Xavier Pastrana found his passion in conducting and composing. As a conductor he has experience in various fields (orchestral, choral, couplet, children's...) where he has always been recognized for his musical sensitivity and the elegance of his gesture. He has been at the head of several formations, but it is with the Ensemble O Vos Omnes that he has achieved recognition as the director of one of the best choirs in the country.

During his training, he studied composition and orchestration with Manel Oltra, an eminent Catalan composer especially valued for his choral work. As a result of this study, Xavier Pastrana demonstrates a great mastery of choral texture and a surprising ability in his interpretations to highlight formal elements and musical tensions and distensions, always maintaining great attention to the ideal balance and independence of the voices in each passage.

In order to complete his studies, Xavier Pastrana spent a short period at the Universität für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna, where he studied orchestral conducting with U. Lajovich and S. Pironkoff, although he has always confessed a special predilection as master by director Salvador Mas.

His first contact with early music comes from Pierre Caó, a Luxembourgish conductor with whom he studies at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya. It was from the study with this conductor that Xavier Pastrana began an idyllic relationship with music from before the 19th century, which combines with his composer's side and, therefore, also keeps him in touch with the music of the 20th century 21st