Miguel Gálvez-Taroncher is winner of the Queen Elisabeth Composition Competiiton 2006 with the piece La Luna y la Muerte for piano and orchestra and winner of the Spanish College in Paris Prize.
Born in 1974 in Valencia (Spain), Miguel Gálvez-Taroncher grew up in an extraordinary musical environment. By the age of 5 he feels already his composer vocation and he begins with his first creation attempts. The family moved to Madrid where he studied piano, harmony and composition at the Conservatorio Profesional de Música “Amaniel”, being the encounters with Enrique Blanco and Luis de Pablo decisive.
When he was 20 years old, with both harmony and chamber music honor prizes, he left for the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna to continue his musical development under tutelage of Professor Michael Jarrell. These years in Vienna mean a great leap in the achievement of a personal style and offer him the opportunity of living the present-day musical panorama. Motivated by these experiences, he formed with several colleagues the group Gegenklang with the goal of making concerts and premiering collective works. Among these first compositions in Vienna we find Alea (for bass clarinet), Nodos (for marimba), Cristal Oscuro (for ensemble), Sphera (for piano and string quintet), El Velo (for piano) and Cantos Nocturnos (for flute and piano).
In 1998 he completed the graduate in composition with “cum laude” and he received the honor prize from the Austrian Ministry of Science. The same year he traveled to Japan, sponsored by the Nippon Foundation, and he premiered Poemas de la ladera este (for voice and piano on poetry by Octavio Paz).
When he returned to Spain in 1999 he wrote Ficciones (for violin and percussion), Strahlung (for bass clarinet and ensemble) and Tossal (for guitar and ensemble). At this time he began teaching harmony, analyze and counterpoint.
In 2001 he created his first symphonic work, Telar, that was premiered by the ORTVE (Spanish radio-TV orchestra). Next year he received the commission for the Konzert für Bassklarinette und Ensemble that was played in Schwaz (Austria) at the Klangspuren Festival 2002. This work marked a new period of maturity engagement. Subsequently another Festival, Wien Modern 2003, welcomed his work Algo sobre la Muerte del Mayor Sabines, which was followed by his first string quartet El Sueño Eterno (a commission of the ORF and Jeunesse Austria). Eclipse (for flute, violin and viola), El Gran Inquisidor (for baritone, bass, percussion and tape) and Mondszene (for piano and live electronic on verses by Federico García Lorca) are brought out one year later.
In 2005, invited by the Real Conservatorio Superior de Música “Victoria Eugenia”, he moved to Granada where he occupied a professorship in composition. Here is born Noche de Sollozos (for Mezzo-soprano and Orchestra), commissioned by the Orchestre des Jeunes de la Méditerranée and premiered in Istres (France) and the Festival de Piano de la Roque d’Anthéron among other cities of France and Spain.
In 2007 he was commissioned by the IVM to write a piece for the Arditti Quartet and also by the CDMC to write a new piece for the Festival of Alicante (Spain). He is nowadays composer in residence of the Valencian Youth Orchestra.

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