Agusti Fernandez

Agustí Fernández (Palma de Mallorca, 1954), with a perfectly based career and a well-deserved international reputation, is one of the Spanish musicians of major international projection and a world reference in the field of improvised music. Fernández has worked with famous musicians of the free improvisation scene like Peter Kowald, Derek Bailey, Butch Morris, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, Mats Gustafsson, Joel Ryan and Peter Evans a.m.o. He is a member of the Blue Shroud Band and the London Jazz Composers Orchestra, and has been in Mats Gustafsson NU Ensemble and Barry Guy New Orquestra. Up to the current date he has published more than 150 CD’s.

«Agustí Fernández is one of the most important explorers of avant-garde music in Spain, combining his thorough knowledge of 20th-century modern classical piano with jazz free improvisation to a forge a unique and powerful style” (The Village Voice, New York).

He has also worked with the recognised composer of contemporary music Héctor Parra who composed FREC, a solo for expanded piano, in collaboration with the pianist. FREC has been premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in 2013 with the collaboration of the video artist Lucas Caraba.

He has conducted various improvised music ensembles like Ad Libitum Ensemble (Varsaw), Free Art Ensemble (Barcelona), Ansambl Studio 6 (Lujbljana) Orquesta FOCO (Madrid), Entenguerengue (Jérez de la Frontera), Impromtu Ensemble (Valencia), etc.

Awards and recognition

Along his professional life Agustí Fernández has received much recognition. His solo for piano «Mutza» presented in New York in 2007 was distinguished by the New York magazine AllAboutJazz as one of 10 best concerts from that year. The CD «Un llamp que no s’acaba mai» on PSI (Agustí Fernández, John Edwards and Mark Sanders) has been distinguished by Allaboutjazz as one of the best 10 cd’s in 2009; the CD «Aurora» on Maya Recordings (Agustí Fernandez, Barry Guy and Ramón López) was selected by Cuadernos de Jazz magazine as the best CD in 2007, by the Jaç magazine as the best fourth disc of the history of the Catalan jazz and it was Disc d’émoi (February, 2007) for the French Jazz Magazine. The ”Agustí Fernández Aurora Trio” received the second prize at the BMW Welt Jazz Award 2012 celebrated in Münich, Germany.

In 2000 he received the Festival Altaveu Award, Sant Boi de Llobregat (Catalonia). In 2001 he received the FAD – Sebastià Guasch Award, Barcelona (Cataluña) with Andrés Corchero por el or the performance “A modo de esperanza”.