Carlos de Castellarnau was born in Spain in 1977. In 2010, after studying classical guitar and music theory with Ramon Humet, de Castellarnau enrolled in the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona, where he studied composition with Agustí Charles. In 2012, he traveled to Paris to study composition at the Conservatoire de Paris (CNSMDP) with Stefano Gervasoni, receiving mentoring in electronic music from Yan Maresz. In 2013-2014, he participated in Cursus I (the IRCAM’s composition and computer music course), and completed Cursus II in 2014-2015, with Hector Parra.

Carlos de Castellarnau has received international awards and honors such as the Joan Guinjoan International Prize for Young Composers in 2011, second prize in the Premio Trio di Trieste in 2012, and the Jukeboxx New Music Award in 2015. His compositions have been premiered by ensembles including CrossingLines, the Barcelona Reed Quintet, Ensemble Regards, Ensemble Court-Circuit, Proxima Centauri, the Curious Chamber Players, Vetixe Sonora Ensemble, and the Neofonía Ensemble.

His piece Antropofauna was performed at the IRCAM’s Manifeste Festival in July 2015.

As Carlos de Castellarnau himself says, his more recent works are “particularly influenced by the poietics of informalist painters, reinterpreted through music using an electroacoustic approach to the morphology of sound. Fascinated by the grotesque as a source of poetry and the expressive potential of sound matter, my work combines refined sound and complex timbre.”