Ministriles de Marsias

Ministriles de Mársias is a true ensemble of minstrels, the name given to wind instrumentalists in cathedral chapels. The group's name refers to the dispute between the civilized Apollo with his harp and the barbarous minstrel Marsyas blowing on the tibia. This competition between strings and wind instruments was evoked by Monteverdi and other contemporaries when instrumenting their works to refer to the minstrels' ability to imitate and support the human voice. Fernando Sánchez, who founded the ensemble Ministriles de Marsias together with the renowned cornetist Paco Rubio, collaborates assiduously with orchestras and groups specialized in historically informed performance and is dedicated to the interpretation of music, from the Renaissance to the present day, always using instruments and techniques inherent to each period. Josep Borràs holds a doctorate from the Autonomous University of Barcelona with an acclaimed work on the Hispanic crisis, has been a member of the groups Hesperion XX and Le Concert des Nations (Jordi Savall) and has been professor of bassoon and baroque bassoon at the Curso Internacional de Música Antígua de Daroca since 1989. and the class of historical bassoons at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, where he has held the position of director of the department of Early Music since its foundation in 2001 and is currently director of the School..

Javier Artigas

Javier Artigas studied organ and harpsichord with José Luís González Uriol, winning the Extraordinary Prize for Finalists. Later he continued his studies with Radulescu, Torrent, Schnorr, Alain, Rogg, Houbard and others. As a soloist, he has performed regularly in festivals in Spain and other European countries, in Asia and America, and, as a chamber musician, he has worked with Ministriles de Marsias, Il Trio Galante, Ensemble 415 and La Oropéndola. His recordings include Tañer con Arte, awarded five stars by the magazine Goldberg, and, as musicologist, he was responsible for the new transcription and edition of the keyboard works of Jusepe Jiménez and of Frei Juan Bermudo. He is currently director of the Department of Early Music and professor of organ and harpsichord at the Higher Conservatory of Múrcia, as well as invited professor at the Early Music Department of ESMUC (Barcelona) and technical director of the Early Music Festival of Daroca and the International Organ Days of Saragossa. He is also in charge of the preservation and restoration of the organs of the Region of Múrcia, amongst which is the great Merklin-Schütze organ (1854).