Jesús Torres

Jesús Torres (born in Saragossa in 1965) is one of the key figures in a very talented generation of Spanish composers who have made a significant contribution to the further development of music in Europe. purity—seems to point toward pure tones with definite tuning and exact notation. Even so, his works more and more frequently include “unclean” notes—microtones and overtones, auxiliary fingerings, multiphonics and noises made with the keys of wind instruments or by blowing, even if all these are employed with extreme care and expressive intonation. Additionally, Torres unites the contrasting elements of strict traditional musicality—in which the only justification for a musical note is to produce a sound—and a tendency to compose musical “poems” with or without text, or even to introduce mute gestures or other theatrical elements into his scores. In this way, the character of Torres’ sound, reduced to the essence like a distillate—this is clearly recognizable after even just a few measures of any of his works—comes together with his growing penchant for ornamentation: more and more often, one hears in his works free elements (sometimes rhythmical, melodic or sound-related), elements which intuitively complete or refine a phrase, not so much according to particular principles as, much rather, with an eye toward the result.