" Between composition and research, his work focuses on how sound can be reimagined through new technologies and performance practices. "

Arnau Gran i Romero is a Catalan composer currently based in Paris. Deeply engaged with the technological dimensions of sound, his work frequently unfolds within the realm of electronics, where gesture and abstraction meet.

Born in Catalonia in 2001, he is a composer, pianist, and researcher whose music explores the threshold between instrumental gesture and electroacoustic transformation. He began his musical studies at the Conservatory of Girona, where he trained in piano, cello, and harpsichord, before moving toward contemporary composition under the guidance of José Manuel López López, whom he met in 2018. In 2019, he joined the CRR of Paris and earned his DEM in composition with the highest honors.

Driven by a quest for a language in which the materiality of sound dialogues with its digital disintegration, he pursued a degree in musicology and computer-assisted composition at the University of Paris VIII, under the supervision of Alain Bonardi and Anne Sèdes, followed by a master’s in the same discipline. In parallel, he refined his instrumental practice at ESMAR in Valencia, developing a writing style that is increasingly hybrid, sensory, and interdisciplinary.

He is currently studying composition at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Paris (CNSMDP) with Gérard Pesson, while working with Luis Naón, Yan Maresz, and Grégoire Lorieux in the field of new technologies. His artistic research centers around gestural complexity in electroacoustic music and the obsolescence of digital repertoires, designing new performance interfaces to rethink the act of listening and sonic transmission.

His music is marked by a profound attention to fragile textures, where instantaneous gestures confront the gradual erasure of form. Seeking to extend the resonance of acoustic instruments into fluid sonic spaces, he constantly questions the boundary between the organic and the artificial, the gesture and its echo.

His works have been performed by major contemporary ensembles such as Ensemble Intercontemporain, L’Itinéraire, Cairn, TM+, Sinkro, MG21, KDM, 2E2M, and the Feedback Trio. In 2023, he was commissioned to compose Monochrome rouge-oxide for the Feedback Trio as part of the Mostra Sonora Sueca festival—a piece inspired by the work of Mark Rothko, evoking choreographed violence, deep chromaticism, and the slow burn of sonic reaction.

In 2024, he was selected by Ensemble Divertimento to participate in the Incontri Internazionali per Giovani Compositori "Franco Donatoni" project, where he is creating a new work for soprano, narrator, ensemble, and electronics centered on the theme of ecological awareness. He has also been invited to present his music in international festivals such as MA/IN in Rome and Supersonique in France.

Arnau Gran i Romero’s works are published by Éditions Lacroch’.