Gerard Pastor

Born in Barcelona in 1984, Gerard Pastor began his musical training at the age of 4. He studied piano at the Sabadell Conservatoire under Monica Buxo; (piano) and Miquel Pardo (composition) where he was awarded the Premio de Honor for Piano. In 2007 he obtained the higher diploma in piano from the Escola Superior de Musica de Catalunya, where he studied under Maria Jesus Crespo. Since then, he has continued his piano studies at Musikeon under Luca Chiantore and studied orchestral conducting under Jordi Mora. In addition to his regular studies, he has also participated in various master classes in Spain under teachers including Jose; Vicente, Ignasi Terraza, Iramar Rodriguez, Kenny Werner, Chick Corea, Eric Heidsieck and Luca Chiantore. He was the winner of the 11th Fundacion Arjau Competition (Barcelona, 2006) and his compositions have been performed by major orchestras both in Spain and abroad. Together with Armando Merino, in 2005 he founded the Martinu Ensemble, an instrumental ensemble of varying size of which he was the assistant director and titular pianist between 2005 and 2010. The particular focus of the ensemble's intense concert activity is the recovery of lost and rarely-performed repertories, as well as encouraging young composers, with a special emphasis on works for septet, octet and nonet. He played in other chamber music groups like "Alla Breve Duo" and "Duo Claret-Pastor". He played too with important players like Lluis Claret. They recorded together the world premiere of Casals works for cello and piano in 2010. He composed music for different short and long films with a remarkable work with Anna M. Bofarull. They worked together in "Notes al Peu" a documentary about the spanish civil war and "Hammada" a documentary about saharan people in Argel. Recently he worked with the composer Michael Nyman and the director Trisha Ziff at "The Mexican Suitcase" (2011). Gerard Pastor worked too in other audiovisual formats. He is the composer of the Furius Baco's Soundtrack placed at PortAventura (Spain), the most important thematic park in Spain.