Bios and contacts:

José Vítores

He was born in Guayaquil, Ecuador, in 1962. A composer, producer, arranger, guitarist, and teacher, he persued his musical studies in Ecuador, Germany, and Spain. Under the guidance of Ryuhei Kobayashi, he studied classical guitar at the Antonio Neumane Conservatory in Guayaquil. He participated in international seminars on composition and film music across various countries. As a performer, he was a founding member of the ensemble Cantango Berlin, with which he gave many concerts at the Berlin Philharmonic, among other prestigious venues. He obtained a Master’s degree in Arranging and Orchestration from the renowned Berklee College of Music. As a composer, however, he considers himself predominantly self-taught. He has composed works for orchestra, theater, chamber music, and multimedia projects. He has made several recordings in CD and DVD with different ensembles in Germany. Some of his works have been published in Europe by the publishers Verlag Neue Musik and Mesa Music Publishing. In his work as composer and arranger, he has collaborated with the Peruvian youth orchestra Orquesta de Barro, the Berliner Symphoniker, the Brandenburg Symphonie Orchestra, the German Ensemble Aventure (Festival Musicaviva 2012, Ecuador), the Ecuadorian Contemporary Music Festival, the Berlin Symphony Orchestra, the Trier Philharmonic Orchestra, and double bassists Edicson Ruiz and Klaus Stoll of the Berlin Philharmonic. He won the 1st Prize in the instrumental music category at the Song Expo Wettbewerb 2001 competition (Netherlands). His short opera Historias de Piratas (Pirate Stories), for soprano, ensemble, electronic music, and video, with poems by A. Blum and Y. Magrini, was premiered in Berlin in 2019. He currently resides in Berlin, focusing on composition and teaching.