Artistic director

For over two decades, Vicente Parrilla, artistic director of More Hispano and recorder player, has focused on recovering the lost art of improvisation in sixteenth-century music. His work combines performance, historical research, and practice-led enquiry into Renaissance improvised counterpoint

“Whereas for most period-instrument bands improvisation means judiciously adding ornaments, Mr. Parrilla and company go all out. Mr. Parrilla, on recorder, takes turns with the other instrumentalists elaborating on the composers’ melodies, often adding modal touches and varying the rhythms, much as a virtuosic jazz band would do with a group of standards.”

—The New York Times, 17 February 2011

Performer

I began my concert career at an early age, making my first CD recording — devoted entirely to the seventeenth-century Spanish composer B. de Selma y Salaverde — at the age of 20. In addition to leading my quartet, More Hispano, and a number of other projects, I have collaborated with musicians and ensembles across a wide range of musical traditions, including jazz pianist Enrico Pieranunzi; jazz bassists Barry Guy and Pablo Martín Caminero; flamenco artists Rocío Márquez, Patricia Guerrero, María José Pérez, Arcángel, and Miguel Ángel Cortés; and early music ensembles such as Euskal Barrokensemble, Accademia del Piacere, The Royal Wind Music Consort, Speculum, Artefactum, Orphenica Lyra, Capella de Ministrers, El Paraíso Perdido, and the Seville Baroque Orchestra, with whom I have performed as a soloist, as well as the Madrid Symphony Orchestra.

I have performed at festivals and concert halls in Spain, Ireland, England, Austria, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Poland, Portugal, Switzerland, Germany, Slovenia, Croatia, Brazil, and Mexico.

Education

I studied the recorder at the Conservatory of Seville with Guillermo Peñalver. At the age of 17, I moved to the Netherlands to continue my studies, first with Jeanette van Wingerden at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague, and later with Walter van Hauwe at the Conservatory of Amsterdam, where I graduated in 2001 (BMus). I subsequently studied with Pedro Memelsdorff at ESMUC in Barcelona and attended numerous courses with Aldo Abreu.

I also hold a Master’s degree in Musicology, Music Education and Interpretation of Early Music (MMus, 2018) from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC), and a doctorate in the arts from KU Leuven / LUCA School of Arts, undertaken within docARTES and hosted by the Orpheus Instituut in Ghent.

Researcher

My research focuses on Renaissance improvised counterpoint and on the relationships between historical sources, listening, memory, and real-time musical practice. My doctoral dissertation, Renaissance Improvised Counterpoint: Rethinking Concept, Cognition, and Aural Foundations, investigated how historical contrapuntal knowledge can become operative in performance through the interaction of analytical, aural, mnemonic, and practical forms of knowledge.

The doctoral project was supported by the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) through a PhD Fellowship in Fundamental Research. As part of this research, I created the open-access Corpus of Recorded Counterpoint Examples (CRCE), a collection of 420 recordings based on Renaissance counterpoint sources and designed for listening, analysis, and practice.

Educator

I am Professor of Recorder at the Superior Conservatory of Music in Seville, where I hold a permanent position awarded through competitive examination. I have held this position since 2004 and have been on leave since 2019. During my active tenure there, I taught recorder as well as ornamentation and improvisation for period instruments.

As a guest teacher, I have given recorder and historical improvisation masterclasses and workshops at conservatories and institutions in Madrid, Zaragoza, Cuenca, Esbjerg (Denmark), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Basel (Switzerland, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis), and Faro (Portugal), as well as at the XIII, XIV, and XV editions of the Muestra de Música Antigua Castillo de Aracena (Huelva).

Discography

I have recorded three CDs as leader of More Hispano: Canzoni, Fantasie et Correnti (1998), Yr a oydo (2010), and GLOSAS (2011). I am currently preparing a new recording project.

I have also appeared as a guest artist on a number of recordings for labels including Alia Vox Diversa, Glossa, Carpe Diem, Alqhai & Alqhai, Lindoro, and CDM. See my complete discography here.

Read more at vicenteparrilla.com