home > biography > short CV >


Pencil on a piece of cardboard
(by Joaquín Turina de Santos, ca. 1970)



José Luis Turina
Curriculum Vitae (260 words)


Born in Madrid, 1952. After his studies at the conservatories of Barcelona and Madrid, he received a grant from the Spanish Ministry for Foreign Affairs for studying at the Spanish Fine Arts Academy in Rome, where he attended the classes in Composition given by Franco Donatoni at the Santa Cecilia Academy.
En 1981 he won the First Prize in the Internacional Composition Contest First Centennial of the Orchestra of the Valencia Conservatory with the work Meeting Point. In 1986. In 1986 he won the First Prize of the Musical Composition Contest Queen Sofía, with his piece Ocnos (orchestral music on poems by Luis Cernuda). In 1996 he was awarded with the National Prize in Music. He has been commissioned many times, either by public or by private institutions, as well as by many ensembles and soloists, and his music has been played (La Fura dels Baus, Tokyo String Quartet, Brodsky Quartet, among many others) in the most important national and international festivals.
Teacher of Harmony in the Conservatories of Cuenca an Madrid since 1981, in 1983 he was designated technical advisor of the Ministry for Education and Science, for the reformation of musical teaching in the realm of the new education law of 1990. Since 2001 and until 2020 he was artistic director of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra.
In March 2022, the Plenary of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando appointed him academic of the Music Section, filling the vacancy left by Antón García Abril, taking possession of the medal n. 30 on April 23, 2023.


April 2023