Composer-conductor Francisco Coll has found advocates in the world’s leading orchestras and ensembles, including the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, LA Philharmonic, City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, and Ensemble Modern. His music has been heard at festivals from Aldeburgh, Aix and Aspen to the BBC Proms, Verbier and Tanglewood, and at the Phillips Collection; his work is performed by leading instrumentalists, including Kirill Gerstein, Javier Perianes, Pekka Kuusisto, Sol Gabetta, Augustin Hadelich, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Sean Shibe, and Cuarteto Casals.

Born in Valencia in 1985, Coll studied at the Valencia and Madrid Conservatoires before moving to London to work privately with Thomas Adès (as his only pupil to-date) and with Richard Baker at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama.

Coll’s concert opener Hidd’n Blue was premiered in 2012 by the London Symphony Orchestra and has since been taken up by the SWR Sinfonieorchester, Münchner Philharmoniker, and the Cincinnati Symphony.

He conducted the premiere of Enemigo del pueblo, an evening-length opera after Ibsen, in November 2025 at the Palau de les Arts with further performances at the Teatro Real in February 2026; in the New Yorker Alex Ross described Coll “as a significant new creative force in the opera world”. The Madrid debut was complemented by an exhibition of his paintings and a chamber music focus; he was also a featured composer at the Philips Collection in 2026. Coll’s 2014 chamber opera Café Kafka, to a text by Meredith Oakes, was premiered to great acclaim by Aldeburgh Music, Opera North and the Royal Opera, Covent Garden, and has since been produced at Valencia’s Palau de les Arts.

In 2016 Coll made his BBC Proms debut with the Four Iberian Miniatures for violin and chamber orchestra, conducted by Thomas Adès. The same year Mural was premiered by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg conducted by Gustavo Gimeno, who has become one of Coll’s strongest supporters. Turia, a concerto for guitar and seven players was premiered in 2017 by Jacob Kellerman and Norrbotten NEO conducted by Christian Karlsen; a version for guitar and chamber orchestra received its first performance in 2021 at the Uppsala International Guitar Festival.

In 2018-19 Coll was Composer-in-Residence with Camerata Bern, a position that culminated in the premiere of the Double Concerto Les Plaisirs Illuminés with Patricia Kopatchinskaja and Sol Gabetta as soloists and the composer himself conducting. A Violin Concerto for Kopatchinskaja, commissioned by the Orchestre Philharmonique du Luxembourg, London Symphony Orchestra, Seattle Symphony, the NTR ZaterdagMatinee and Bamberger Symphoniker, was premiered in February 2020. His Cello Concerto premiered with Sol Gabetta in 2022 with the Philharmonie de Paris, conducted by the composer, and recieved its UK premiere at the 2024 BBC Proms with the BBC Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Tianyi Lu. A revised version of trombone concerto Tapias debuts with Ian Bousfield and the Stavanger Symphony in 2026. 

In 2019 he became the first composer to receive an International Classical Music Award (ICMA). In 2022 he was awarded two more: the Orchestra award and the Contemporary Music prize for the orchestral portrait disc. Coll conducted his own music at the ICMA awards ceremony that year. Plaisirs Illuminés, released on Alpha in 2021, features his double concerto for Kopatchinskaja and Gabetta, with Coll conducting Camerata Bern – in 2022 it won the BBC Music Magazine concerto prize. A portrait disc of his orchestral works, with Gustavo Gimeno conducting, was released on Pentatone in 2021.

From 2018-2020 Coll was Composer-in-Residence with the Orquesta de València. Coll’s Cello Concerto for Sol Gabetta premiered with the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France in November 2022, conducted by the composer. In 2024 the London Philharmonic Orchestra and Gustavo Gimeno premiered Ciudad sin sueño¸ a new work for piano and orchestra for Javier Perianes, which made its North American debut with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, and will appear with the Spanish National Orchestra in 2027. 

From 2022-2025 Coll was Artistic Partner to the Orquesta Sinfónica del Principado de Asturias, as both composer and conductor; in 2025 they premiered Lilith, which makes its Canadian debut with the Toronto Symphony and Gustavo Gimeno in 2026. Kirill Gerstein premiered an acclaimed Piano Concerto with Simon Rattle and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra in 2026, which has subsequently been performed by the Melbourne Symphony, Orquesta Sinfónica de Castilla y León, Orquestra Sinfonica do Estado de Sao Paulo, and Boston Symphony.

Francisco Coll is represented worldwide as a conductor by Askonas Holt.

The title comes directly from the celebrated short story by Jorge Luis Borges, although the work does not seek to narrate it or follow its plot. Rather, I am interested in the atmosphere of ideas that runs through it: circularity, memory, identity, and the relationship between the creator and that which is created.

In the story, a man dreams of and gradually constructs another being until he brings it to life, only to discover that he himself is the dream of another. This mirror-like structure, in which creator and creation ultimately become indistinguishable from one another, contains something that I find deeply musical. Composing also involves constructing a reality that gradually begins to take on a life of its own. One believes one is controlling the material, but there comes a point when one no longer knows exactly who is leading whom.

This idea of circularity is also present in the very construction of the work. The musical material moves forward while constantly returning to itself, although never in exactly the same way. The main theme grows out of a small three-note cell that reappears in transformed form throughout the piece, like a memory that returns again and again without ever becoming completely fixed. Some passages are built around a kind of endless canon. The canon functions not only as counterpoint, but also as a way of making musical time turn back upon itself in a spiral: the voices pursue and overlap one another, causing the material to return even as it continues to move forward.

But there is also a more personal dimension behind the work: my first steps in music took place within a wind band, the Agrupación Musical L’Amistat de Quart de Poblet, and are closely linked to the distinctive sound of these ensembles. After so many years of writing orchestral works and operas, I felt that the time had come to write a work for symphonic wind band.

In Las ruinas circulares, I have tried to transform some of these experiences into music. The wind band does not appear here simply as an orchestra without violins and violas, but as an organism with an identity of its own: physical, spatial, collective and extraordinarily rich in timbral possibilities. The work begins and ends with a fanfare, while solemn chorales, chants and dances built on repetitive rhythms with an almost ancestral character also emerge throughout the piece. In combination, these elements also acquire an energy reminiscent of certain forms of contemporary urban music. I was interested in exploring these different sound masses and allowing different perspectives to coexist within the same acoustic space.

Writing this work has helped me unlock many memories. There are things we believe we have forgotten which, nevertheless, continue to work silently within us. I have had the feeling that some of those ideas I had as a child have re-emerged, many years later, in this work.

Francisco Coll, Lucerne, September 2026.