In this article series, together with Sustainable EEEMERGING and its partners, we explore Early music across Europe – and the challenges faced by young artists in various countries across the continent. What is the condition of Early music today?
This article was supported by Festival de Torroella de Montgrí.
How can one make a truly sustainable career as a musician? It is not only down to talent, or even hard work. In reality, it’s all about an ability to organise. By this measure, Spanish tenor, conductor and ensemble director Jorge Losana ought to have many years of successful music-making ahead of him – he began organising at an early age.
“When I was six or seven years old,” he tells me over video call from his office in Barcelona, “there was no classical music in my family”. His father was a drummer with a band, “but I always wanted to sing in the parish choir, and I was too young – so I made a family choir. I taught them all the parts and it was really fun.” Losana would repeatedly echo this early talent for musical organising, eventually forming the choral ensemble Cantoría, now celebrating its tenth year.
Losana’s love for singing stayed with him into secondary school where, at age of 15 – when many of the same age would be only just emerging from the Xbox years – he set up another, more serious choir. After that, a trip to the Taizé monastery in France confirmed his love for music’s capacity to bring people together.
“I really liked the openness and the way they treat music, how music was uniting people. I liked a lot of the African and gospel music, and I decided through that and my experiences in the school that I wanted to do choir conducting.” Did he have an instrument, apart from the voice, to take along to his musical studies? “I couldn’t decide. I tried every one. A bit of saxophone, recorder, piano and guitar. And in the end, that’s why I decided to sing and to conduct because I could not play anything!”
No wonder Losana’s path through musical training was an unusual one. “In Spain the system is when you are eight years old, you start at the conservatoire and learn your instruments. There is a fairly fixed path to the High School of Music.” However, he admits “I am not very good at paths.” Born in Murcia, Losana swerved the earlier section of the journey, but then at 18 went to study conducting at the University of Music and the Performing Arts in Mannheim.
Anyone who’s not so good at paths needs a guide, and Losana’s was a recorder teacher called Juan Franscisco Cayuelas who encouraged him to try things out in his own way. “I’ve always been a bit of a rebel, which is a good and a bad thing, but it made me an entrepreneur in music.”
Further studies took him to Basel and then to Barcelona, where he lives now. “Barcelona,” he explains, “together with Porto, is the capital of Early music right now in the Iberian Peninsula.”
Losana’s own successful vocal ensemble Cantoría has emerged from this vibrant scene. Celebrating their tenth anniversary this year, they have been resident at Early music festivals in York and Utrecht, and are widely praised for their charismatic, witty and theatrical delivery. Bringing people in is a theme that has travelled with Losana from Taizé, perhaps, and goes some way to explaining the group’s specialism with the so-called ensaladas of Spanish renaissance composer Mateo Flecha ‘el Viejo’, which they have recorded for Ambronay’s label.
Ensaladas – or salads – were popular non-liturgical songs of the 16th century that were performed outside churches with the aim of bringing the ordinary populace inside to worship. The songs tell of dramatic disasters – ship-wrecks and other mishaps – leading to much anguish, weeping and wailing. But it’s not long before help appears on the horizon and a happy ending is in sight – cue dancing and clapping. Not only do these Renaissance era pop mash-ups suit a young ensemble, they also tap into a very live issue in Spain’s early music scene – the question of heritage. “We are trying to fight the demographic challenge in Spain, which is trying to create a more sustainable system doing festivals in small villages, connecting with architectural heritage: the churches, the castles, the palaces, and connecting with villages where maybe there isn’t so much culture already.” The idea is to find ways to look at the past with Early music as a contemporary lens.
Someone who agrees wholeheartedly with this approach is Montse Faura, director of the Festival de Torroella de Montgrí, one of Catalonia’s premier music festivals and a frequent draw for Early music performers, including Cantoría in 2025. “There is a shift in our relationship with heritage,” Faura says. “It is no longer only preserved, but activated. Early music becomes a living creative space, capable of speaking to the present and building communities.” Engaging young performers willing to go the extra mile to create performances that speak to a new generation of audiences are all part of the picture.
Cantoría – now based in Barcelona – finds itself, with Catalonia, at the heart of this second renaissance. As might be expected in the capital of a region with its own strong identity, there’s a strong entrepreneurial spirit, particularly amongst young musicians. “Barcelona is a city really open to the world”, Losana says, and Faura agrees, citing Catalonian festivals Bachcelona, Espurnes Barroques and the Festival de Música Antiga dels Pirineus as regional innovators. Barcelona is not only home to the Escola Superior da Musica da Catalunya (ESMUC) but also to one of the current Early music scene’s founding fathers, Jordi Savall.
Montse Faura calls it an “ecosystem”, one shaped by now internationally recognised figures – not just Savall, but Dani Espasa with Vespres d’Arnadí, Núria Rial, Anna Alàs and Xavier Sabata, as well as performers like the violinist Alba Roca – of Gli Incogniti – and musicians such as Lluís Coll, Pere Olivé and Jordi Gimeno, among others. They have all “contributed significantly to placing historically informed performance at a high level of excellence and international visibility.”
Aside from Faura’s own Festival de Torroella de Montgrí, which takes place in July and August each year on the Costa Brava, elsewhere across Spain are other events of importance, including the Festival Internacional de Música y Danza de Granada, the Quincena Musical de San Sebastián and the Festival de Música Antigua de Sevilla, all of which have an international focus.
Losana and Faura agree that anywhere in Spain is an exciting place to be right now in terms of Early music, with a lively cross-pollination between pioneers, established ensembles, a burgeoning festival scene and an innovative emerging new generation. EEEMERGING has played a vital role, particularly with Festival de Torroella, with whom it has worked in partnership since 2018. In 2025 the Festival de Torroella further strengthened its European ties by co-producing an orchestral residency with the Festival d’Ambronay.
For many young musicians, it’s the potential of new discovery within the still-emerging Renaissance and Baroque music of the Iberian peninsula that is a strong motivation – and one that keeps turning up welcome surprises. As it turns out, explains Losana, the Baroque composer Jose de San Juan (c.1685–1747), the Master of the Madrid’s Chapel Royal, was not born in Madrid at all, but in Catalonia, a fact he had to keep secret from his employer, the King. His music picks up some of the themes of Flecha’s ensaladas but 150 years on, becoming 150 years bigger and more elaborate, with instruments as well as voices. Losana’s Cantoría have made a recording that will be out in October this year, and the foray into de San Juan’s music has meant a gathering in forces. “We began with 4 and we were 20 in this recording, so that’s a big step for us.”
Losana also champions the young musicians emerging from other parts of Europe. He is director of the ECOS Festival de Sierra Espuña, and is frequently invited as a speaker, jury member, and professor at international forums such as Early Music America, the Brighton Live Young Artists Scheme, the International Young Artist’s Presentation in Antwerp, the Early Music Week of Estella, and the S-EEEMERGING project.
As Cantoría celebrates its 10th anniversary, there is plenty of organising still to do, and Jorge Losana is about to get very busy – between rehearsals – with travel arrangements. The ensemble that found themselves last year shuttling between the Concertgebouw and the Wigmore Hall are about to go a little further afield. “So we are trying to find a balance between travelling and being present in the European scene and work”, says Losana, “because now we are going to Bangladesh, Colombia and Canada.” It just so happens that the Spanish Ambassador to Bangladesh is an Early music fan, and gave Cantoria a call. “We are going to be in three different continents for the anniversary, and that’s very, very nice.”
For someone who doesn’t really do paths, there look to be several exciting ways ahead.
See upcoming Early music events in Spain.
Sustainable EEEMERGING is funded by the European Union.
Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.
This article was sponsored by Centre culturel de rencontre d’Ambronay.
