About Me

My full name is Juan Luis Pérez Floristán, but to differentiate me from my father (also Juan Luis) at home I have always been called Juan (or Juanillo). But that doesn't answer the question of who I am, but what my name is. Saying who one is is complicated, so I will try to get out of the way by going through my main life and academic milestones (we will leave the professional ones for later).

I was born in 1993, in Seville, a city in the south of Spain, which in itself is in the south of Europe. My father, Juan Luis Pérez, is an orchestra conductor, and from him I learned to conduct. My mother, María Floristan, is a pianist and pedagogue, and from her I learned to play the piano. My sister, Carmen Perez, is a pharmacist, but she cannot deny that music runs through her veins either, and today she plays the drums in a Batukada (maybe someday I will learn that from her, too). Nata was our dog, an Épagneul Breton, who accompanied us for 15 years and made us the happiest family in the world, and now it is Woody (another Breton) who continues to give us joy.

When I was 15 years old I met Elisabeth Leonskaja, and her artistic, pedagogical and human quality changed my life completely. It was she who gave me an advice that I followed to the letter: to go to Madrid. Leonskaja would continue to accompany me for many years with her invaluable advice and classes, and, in the meantime, I listened to her and left Seville (a city that would not be my place of residence for 12 years).

So at the age of 16 I moved to Madrid, where I continued my piano studies with Galina Eguiazarova at the Escuela de Música Reina Sofía for 4 years. It was probably the most important period of my artistic and personal formation, where I cultivated great friendships, witnessed unforgettable concerts (alas, Abbado...) and gained more stage experience than ever.

When I was 20 years old, I decided to go a little further north: to Berlin, no less. The reason was twofold: on the one hand, there was Eldar Nebolsin, who would be my last great Maestro; and, on the other hand, the city of Berlin itself, an incredible and incomprehensible cultural microcosm in which I immersed myself for 7 years. At the Hochschule für Musik Hanns Eisler I not only broadened my piano training with Eldar's invaluable guidance, but also opened new artistic and personal horizons: I took drum lessons for two years at the Jazz Institut in Berlin with Mario Würzebesser, had my first experiences of theater and stage presence (at the hands of Kristin Gutenberg), attended even more unforgettable concerts (alas, Rattle...), cultivated as many friendships, continued to deepen my love for film and the performing arts (I recommend any visitor not to miss the Babylon Cinema, where I was so happy), and spent more time than I can remember on a stage.

But cities like Berlin are a poisoned gift: everything happens there, everything has to pass through there, that's where you meet everyone... but everything is eventually forgotten, everything passes, and nothing sticks. Tired of saying goodbye to so many friends who were leaving the city never to return, I left it after 7 glorious and cold years. Where to?

The South always ends up calling all its children. With incalculable experience behind me and in the middle of the pandemic, I decided to return to Seville when I was 27 years old, without knowing very well why but with the conviction that there is no place like home.

Shortly after returning to my city and continuing with my concert activity, I undertook another of my great life projects, something that I owed to myself and that I had not been able to seriously consider due to lack of time, conviction and energy: my acting training. Without any kind of professional ambition (amateur means, literally, lover) and with the only intention of expanding my scenic tools and investigating new forms of artistic expression, I began to acquire more and more interpretative tools, voice technique, body training... with teachers such as Consuelo Barrera, Ernesto Arias, Lidia Otón, Sarah Kane, Claire Heggen... And I was lucky to find another great figure when I thought that something like that would not happen to me anymore: Vicente Fuentes, guide, mentor and teacher without equal.

And until today...

(I cannot finish this section without mentioning other great masters who marked my life in a special way: Eberhardt Feltz, Claudio Martínez Mehner, Daniel Barenboim, Luca Chiantore, Ana Guijarro, Ferenc Rados, Menahem Pressler, Nelson Goerner, Stephen Kovacevich...).

I do a lot of things, some better than others.

Here is a list (incomplete but representative) of my many concerns and a summary of my professional activity to date:

Oddly enough, handicrafts were never my forte, and even less so when it came to painting, but I have been able to do something useful with them in this life: play the piano. I started when I was 7 years old, not too early or too late for what's common, and with the guidance of my mother, María Floristán, I went up the ladder. From a very young age it was clear to us that stage experience was the most important thing for a musician, so I took every opportunity to showcase myself in public and learn new repertoires. From there came my love for chamber music from a very young age, which has never left me, having formed a trio with Miguel Colom and Fernando Arias (the "VibrArt Trio "). I have also played with musicians such as the Casals Quartet, Andrei Ionita, Pablo Barragán, Pablo Ferrández, Kian Soltani, Dietrich Henschel, Jonian Ilias Kadesha...

My orchestral activity also began at a very young age, playing Mozart's Concerto No. 12 with my father, Juan Luis Pérez, at the baton. Since then, I have played with ensembles such as the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra, the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic, the National Orchestra of Spain, the Jerusalem Camerata, the Monterey Symphony Orchestra (USA), the Malmö Symphony Orchestra, the Royal Symphony Orchestra of Seville, the Barcelona Orchestra... And with conductors such as Jesús López Cobos, Lahav Shani, Juanjo Mena, Pablo González, Marc Soustrot, Leopold Hager, Lorenzo Viotti, Josep Vicent, Max Bragado...

I have also conducted Beethoven and Mozart concertos from the piano (combining my mother's and my father's teachings).

As for the halls in which I have had the privilege of playing, I cannot forget the Royal Albert Hall (with the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at the Proms Festival), Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg, the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires, the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Tonhalle in Zürich, the Philharmonic Orchestra of St. Petersburg, the Béla Bartók Hall of Budapest, the La Fenice Theater of Venice, the Laeiszhalle of Hamburg, Schloss Elmau, the Auditorio Nacional of Madrid, the Palau de la Música of Barcelona, l'Auditori of Barcelona, the Charles Bronfman Auditorium of Tel Aviv, the Romanian Athenaeum of Bucharest...

The biggest milestones of my professional life have been winning in 2015 the International Piano Competition "Paloma O'Shea" in Santander, in 2021 the International Piano Competition "Arthur Rubinstein" in Tel Aviv (in both I also won the audience award) and being Gold Medal of the City of Seville. But I will never forget the saying that it is not entirely up to you to win a prize, but to deserve it is your own responsability...

Since 2020 I am also a piano teacher at the Barenboim Foundation in Seville, and since 2021 I am a teacher of Rhythm Applied to Performance at the acting school "La Colmena" in Seville.

In addition, since 2021 I am also an Official Yamaha Artist.

Changing the subject, cinema has always been my great passion, although I don't know whether to put it here, because I don't do "filmmaking" (although I study it on my own: the only thing in which I am self-taught). But here it is written, in case someday it happens. In the meantime, I write screenplays, theater plays, stories to keep me awake at night... Let's call it for now a "hobby" that I love.

And speaking of writing, I also wrote for two seasons a section for La Ventana de La Ser with Carles Francino. The section was called "Play it again, Juan", same title as... my YouTube channel. I am reluctant to mention it, because running a YouTube channel requires time and a lot of energy, which I don't have in abundance, so let's just say that from time to time I publish videos in which I talk about a little bit of everything (and a lot about music).

When I was a child I loved card tricks and origami. Today I can't even play Poker or fold a napkin correctly.

One can exist and do, but it is of little use if there is nothing behind it. Or maybe it is...

-Talking about classical music is difficult; spreading the word about classical music is easy. 

-Education and sociocultural entertainment are not the same thing.

-Music is a vocational thing, but neither all who are passionate about it are here, nor all that are here are passionate about it.

-Curiosity is not taught. If anything, it is awakened.

-To talk about classical music implies talking about great works of the past, yes, but also about the economic system that has sustained it and sustains it today, about the labor and professional structure where those works live, about the spaces where they are performed and listened to, about the relationship of the audience with the performers, about the recording industry, about the Spotify algorithm, about the aesthetics of live concerts, about the attire of the spectators, about the fact that there is no applause between movements, about how ridiculous it is that there is no applause between movements....

-Just because something is a social construct does not mean that it is not real, important or valid. Classical music is a social construct. Just because something is a social construct does not mean that it is not real, important or valid.

-In the arts, everything is fashion, and fashions are swept away by the wind of times. If we arrogate to ourselves the right to laugh at the interpretative codes of the past, we are giving the future a free hand to do the same to us. Perhaps this is the price to pay so that nothing dies. 

-Words are small failures; that's why we never stop talking: because they are never enough. 

-Little is said about the responsibility of the public.

-To interpret is to give an opinion.

-The text is not the work, and not every text is written. Reading allows to wander, to go back, to glance at the next page, to repeat a phrase: the mind flies without fear of getting lost. Sound allows none of this, and ceases to exist as soon as it is born. 

-What is written is general; sounds are concrete.

-Music exists when it is performed. Composers provide texts to performers for performance. Performers re-present the music.

-None of what I think is valid, but I firmly believe it.