About
The Spanish conductor Carlos Checa was born in Barcelona, in which city he began conducting studies at the age of 17 under Maestro Francesc Llongueres. Carlos later studied with maestro Albert Argudo in the Conservatorio Superior de Música, graduating in orchestral conducting with distinction. In addition, Carlos has taken advanced conducting lessons with Kurt Masur, Antoni Ros Marbà and George Pehlivanian and has also studied composition, instrumentation and advanced musicology, as well as piano, oboe and violin.
In 2005 Carlos founded the International Music Festival Serranía de Cuenca, and in 2006 was awarded a scholarship by the Joven Orquesta Nacional de España. He leapt to the international scene in China in 2005 when he conducted the City Chamber Orchestra of Hong Kong a performance greeted with considerable acclaim. In 2009 he performed in London with excellent reviews conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra at Cadogan Hall, eliciting the following comments from Musical Opinion magazine... "It was clear that the conductor Carlos Checa was wholly in command of his forces, eliciting a performance that got the concert off to a cracking start. .... "This was a brilliant concert, brilliantly conducted and played."
In 2014, at the personal invitation of Maestro Gustavo Dudamel, Carlos made his debut at ‘El Sistema’ in Venezuela; since 2015, Carlos has been artistic and music director of the Jove Orquestra Simfònica de Barcelona (JOSB). The following year he signed as music director of the symphony orchestra with the international record label Universal Music.
Carlos Checa has conducted throughout Europe and South America, and since the 2012-13 season, he has been iinvited regularly to conduct at the Cuenca ciudad de música concerts, including the much-admired tribute to Teresa Berganza at the Auditorio de Cuenca, as well as a tour of the main auditoriums of the Community of Castilla La Mancha with the opera "The Little Sweep" by Benjamin Britten. He celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the Auditorio de Cuenca with a new production of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte.
Contemporary music is also a strong feature of Carlos’s programmes. He has conducted premieres of modern Spanish composers such as Andrés Valero Castells, José Luís López de Aranda, Albert Carbonell and Paco Toledo. The EMEC company recently released Toledo’s ‘Hipodámica’ Symphony, recorded under the baton of Carlos Checa with the Manuel de Falla Orchestra. Clearly, Carlos Checa is an outstanding Spanish conductor of the younger generation in the great tradition.