About
Juan Ignacio Ferreras is an Argentine cellist, improviser, arranger and composer born in Buenos Aires in 1987. For more than a decade he has been actively involved in different projects where popular music, contemporary music and dance intersect.
An original performer, open to sound and body experimentation, Juan Ignacio Ferreras is Professor of Violoncello at the Conservatorio Superior de Música Astor Piazzolla, where he studied with Stanimir Todorov and graduated with a 10, playing works by Britten and Lavista, in 2021. He also has a degree in Sociology (2013) from the University of Buenos Aires, a training that he puts into play through his artistic practice.
Currently, he was admitted to pursue a Master's degree in performance (Violoncello, with orientation in 20th and 21st Century Music, under the guidance of Fabio Presgrave) at the Federal University of Rio Grande Do Norte, Natal, Brazil, in hybrid mode (2022-), obtaining a CAPES Master's Scholarship.
Classes should be fun, and you should enjoy more and more every time you come. That's why I not only teach classical music, but also popular music, songs, and I think improvisation can be a fantastic tool. Of course, teaching technique is fundamental, but it always has to be in function of making the music you want to make.
He studied for several years with Maestros Jorge Pérez Tedesco and Claudio Peña. He has participated in cello masterclasses with professors Hugo Pilger (Brazil), Fábio Presgrave (Brazil), José Pedro Ottonello (USA), Pedro de Alcántara (Brazil) and Jacques Morelembaun (Brazil).
In his most recent projects, Juan Ignacio Ferreras has collaborated together with some of today's most prominent young experimental artists and contemporary dancers.
In 2016 the experimental luthier Javier Bustos summons him to play on his particular devices. Fruit of these collaborations are the works Aerodrones (2016), Mediaciones (2017) and Cuarteto #2 for autonomous chairs (2017 and 2019).
Between 2014 and 2018 he works together with dancer Jésica Josiowicz in the creation and performance of the work Pro (XY) Mo which is presented at the festivals Ciudanza (Usina del Arte, 2015), Mirá! (Espacio Sábato and Faculty of Economics of the UBA, 2015), Diagonales and Ciudades que Danzan (La Plata, 2015), Festival Buenos Aires de Danza Contemporánea (Buenos Aires, 2018).
With direction by Martín Piliponsky, she performs in 2016 the work Afecto and in 2018 the work Sutil (presented in Buenos Aires, La Plata, Peru, Spain, among others). This last work continues to be presented live. Together with K. J. Holmes he performs in 2019 the work 900 bees are humming.
Also in 2019 he is selected for the sixth edition of the BROTE Dance Residencies of the Paco Urondo Cultural Center, coordinated by Quio Binetti and held in Buenos Aires between March and July. In this framework he begins to compose his first dance piece Desierto de sonido, desierto de silencio, together with dancer Tián Ríos Beltrán.
During the last few years he has devoted himself, mainly, to the study of repertoire for cello only by composers of the 20th and 21st century (Britten, Lavista, Frey, Franciosi, González Gamboa, Farkas, etc.), also performing concerts via streaming. For this project, he has received support from BAMúsica and the Fondo Nacional de las Artes. The composer Diego Taranto, in 2021, dedicated and composed a work for solo cello, as did Gabriela Areal, Tomás Cabado, Caio Facó, Carolina Rizzi, Claudio Peña and Gabo Illanes. These works were premiered at the Festival Atemporánea 2023, at the IX Simpósio Internacional de Música na Amazônia SIMA 2023, and in other concerts.
He participates playing repertoire for solo cello and improvising in dance and improvisation classes with Martín Piliponsky and Elia Mrak at the Universidad de las Artes and in different international festivals; and his music was broadcasted in radio programs in Argentina and Europe and he recorded his own and others' arrangements in numerous song albums.
During 2022, with the Philharmonic of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, he played at the Sala São Paulo, the Campos de Jordao Festival, and in the auditorium of the School of Music itself. Also in Brazil, he participated in several solo concerts, presenting improvisations and repertoire for solo cello (in Natal-RN, and in the INDEX Festival, produced by Leviatá, in São Paulo), and together with the group UFRN Cellos.
In the same year, Cássio Carvalho's new album "AREIA" was released, in which Ferreras participated as producer, arranger and cellist.
He was the cellist of the multi-awarded musical "Querido Evan", directed by Sebastián Iñigo, with musical direction by Tomás Meyer Wolf, performed during 6 months of the year 2023 at the Metropolitan Theater of Buenos Aires,
He has also composed the original music for two plays: "El picapedrero", by Valeria Medina, and "Posible sonido de nieve cayendo", by Julio Medina, both premiered in the city of Buenos Aires.