Composer, choral conductor and teacher
Juan José Falcón Sanabria (1936-2015) was a Gran Canarian composer, choral conductor and teacher, winner of the Canary Islands Fine Arts award.
Juan José Falcón Sanabria (Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, 1936-2015) was a central figure in contemporary Canarian art music. His career developed across three inseparable fields: composition, teaching and choral conducting, through which he helped build a modern musical infrastructure in Gran Canaria.
He founded and directed choral projects such as Alba Vox, the Coral Polifónica de Las Palmas and the Schola Cantorum of the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He also taught composition at the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Las Palmas and directed the university's Aula de Música, training performers, composers and audiences in an island context that needed stable musical institutions.
His catalogue contains more than seventy works, including choral, chamber, symphonic and symphonic-choral music. His language moved from tonality towards atonality, twelve-tone writing and a personal exploration of rhythmic and sonic textures, with works such as La hija del cielo, Aura de Gran Canaria and his Himno a Canarias. He received the Canary Islands Fine Arts and Performance award in 1994, the Gold Medal for Merit in Fine Arts and the title of Favourite Son of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His legacy places Canarian academic composition firmly on the Spanish musical map of the twentieth century.