Jordi Francés

 

 

Jordi Francés is a young musician who is developing an interesting career, characterized by a wide focus in his artistic activity. He works with opera, symphonic repertoire and contemporary composition and his upcoming and recent most relevant engagements include invitations to conduct the SpanishNational Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de la Comunidad de Madrid, Orquesta Sinfónica de Valencia, the Bilbao Symphony Orchestra, Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid and the Ensemble Sonido Extremo, of which he is the artistic director.

Fascinated by 20th and 21st century music and its lines of musical thought, Jordi Francés has conducted ensembles such as the Spanish Rtve Orchestra, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, Lucerne Festival Academy Orchestra, the Dijon Opera Orchestra, Orquesta de Extremadura and other ensembles in Europe and the Americas such as the BBC Philharmonic, with whom he made a recording produced by the BBC itself.

Being very interested in contemporary composition, he has conducted the world premieres of more than 80 pieces of music and has worked with composers such as Birtwistle, Eötvös, Haas, Manoury, Gervasoni, Sotelo, López-López, Hurel, Sánchez-Verdú, Camarero, Torres, Río-Pareja, Magrané, García-Tomás, Rueda, among many others.

His involvement in the opera world is mostly due to his work with Josep Pons, who he has assisted at the Gran Teatre del Liceu in Barcelona since 2015 with operas such as Götterdämmerung, Elektra, Tristan und Isolde and Katia Kabanová. He also assisted frequently David Afkham at the Spanish National Orchestra and with him he collaborated on the production of Ginastera’s Bomarzo at the Teatro Real in Madrid, where he made his conducting debut in 2016 with Brundibar. He has also conducted Madama Butterfly at the Bulgarian State Opera, and other opera engagements appear in his diary for upcoming seasons like, for instance, the world premiere of ‘Tránsito’ by Jesús Torres in the season of Teatro Real.

For many years, Jordi has also developed a successful pedagogical approach to work with young musicians and has carried out projects with some of the most respected spanish institutions such as: JONDE (Spanish National Youth Orchestra), JORCAM (Joven Orquesta de la Comunidad de Madrid), ESMUC (Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya), JONC (Catalonian National Youth Orchestra), etc. Among these projects we find ballet, opera, music theater, symphonic programs, contemporary music projects, etc. Jordi makes use of his broad education as a performer and musicologist to develop a way of working that awakens critical thinking in the students to stimulate an open-minded approach to classical music performance.

Other highlights of Jordi Francés’ career include his Master’s Degree of Musicology at Universidad de la Rioja, as well as his current research which focusses on classical music programming.  His activity in the field of musicology is focused in: research and critical editions of spanish XIX century repertoire, the artistic advice of musical institutions and the co-direction of the Seminar «Hacia Nuevos Horizontes de Escucha» (Towards New Horizons of Listening) at the University «Carlos III» in Madrid.

He is a graduate of the Hogeschool Zuyd in Maastricht (Netherlands) and has a postgraduate degree in conducting contemporary repertoire from the “Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana” in Switzerland.  He has been awarded prizes in various international conducting competitions and for many years combined his work as a concert percussion soloist with conducting.  He now performs only as a conductor and his wide training in this area allowed him to study in depth on many varied types of repertoire with great specialists such as Kurt Masur, Jorma Panula, Peter Eötvös, Neeme Järvi and Paavo Järvi in institutions such as the Manhattan School of Music, the “International Järvi Academy» in Estonia, the «Eötvös Foundation» in Budapest and IRCAM in Paris, among others.