Biography
Alejandro Román (Madrid, Spain, 1971) is a composer and pianist who studied under Valentín Ruiz, Antón García Abril, and Zulema de la Cruz at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, earning a degree as a Senior Lecturer in Composition and Piano Accompaniment. He has participated in specialized courses with Miguel Zanetti, Giancarlo Simonacci, Carmelo Bernaola, Adolfo Núñez, Emiliano del Cerro, and Jean Claude Risset, and attended workshops with composers such as Christopher Halffter, Leonardo Balada, Krzysztof Penderecki, and Philip Glass.
He holds a PhD from UNED for his research titled "Musivisual Analysis, an approach to the study of film music," which explores the relationship between visual language and musical language.
His repertoire includes over eighty compositions spanning piano, voice, guitar, orchestra, chamber, electroacoustic, and pedagogical music, as well as popular modern styles like jazz and pop, alongside music for film, theater, and dance. As a performer, he has been part of various jazz and rock groups, recording around a dozen albums.
His works have been performed by the Prague City Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra, Sonor Ensemble under Luis Aguirre, Soloists of Seville led by Miguel Ángel Gris, Modus Novus directed by Santiago Serrate, Sax Ensemble conducted by José Luis Temes, Trío Arbós, Claudio Ianni, Pilar Jurado, Ara Malikian, Manuel Ruiz Salas, Eduardo Costa, Sergei Mesropian, Sebastián Mariné, Rosa María Calvo-Manzano, Pedro López Salas, among others.
Román has received numerous composition awards, including the Juan Crisóstomo Arriaga Prize at the XVI SGAE Prize for Young Composers for his piece "Ménades," and Best Original Soundtrack at the Zaragoza Film Festival for the film "Niño Vudú" by Toni Bestard. In 2015, he was honored with the National Award "Cultura Viva" in the Music category.
He has taught courses and delivered lectures on film music at film schools, universities, and conservatories, emphasizing the significance of music as a language in relation to imagery. He is the author of several books, including "The Language Musivisual: Semiotics and Aesthetics of Film Music," "Analysis Musivisual," and "Composition Musivisual."
For many years, he taught various subjects at the Escuela de Música Creativa in Madrid. He has been a professor of composition at the conservatories of El Escorial and Alcalá de Henares, the Alfonso X el Sabio University (UAX), and the International University of La Rioja (UNIR). Currently, he is a professor of Composition for Audiovisual Media at the Royal Conservatory of Music in Madrid, where he founded the "CINEMA" classroom (Composition and Research in Audiovisual Media). He also serves as the director of the Master's program "Technologies of Soundtrack Composition and Music for Videogames" at the Complutense University of Madrid (UCM).
