Juan Verdaguer is a composer, performer, sound projectionist, sound designer, teacher, and software developer based in the Netherlands. His work brings together contemporary music, electronics, live performance, spatial sound, and digital tools for musicians. He studied at the Utrecht Conservatorium and later completed master’s degrees in Music and Art of Sound and Sonology at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Den Haag.
His practice moves between the concert hall, the studio, the classroom, and software development. He has worked with the music of Karlheinz Stockhausen as both sound projectionist and sound designer, including his involvement in aus LICHT at the Holland Festival. There he worked on SYNTHI-FOU, MICHAELs JUGEND, MICHAELs REISE, LUZIFERs TANZ, MÄDCHENPROZESSION, EVAs LIED, INVASION-EXPLOSION, and ENGEL-PROZESSIONEN, and also taught Stockhausen’s electronic music. For him, sound projection is not simply a technical task, but a musical practice shaped by listening, interpretation, and the experience of space.
He has worked at the Nationale Opera & Ballet in Amsterdam as a sound designer for productions such as La Traviata, Fidelio, and Boris Godunov. Alongside this work, he has remained active in composition, performance, electronics, bells, radio, and mixed-media collaboration.
This breadth is also reflected in his own work. In URBAUM, music, projection, fabric, and installation came together as a single immersive environment, created in collaboration with Christopher Collings and others. In Possible Impossibells, developed through the Virtual Bells project, he explored the meeting point between the traditional sound world of the carillon and digitally transformed bell sounds. Across these works runs a lasting interest in resonance, transformation, and the meeting of acoustic and electronic worlds.
Teaching has long been an important part of his work. He has taught music theory, harmony, counterpoint, analysis, notation software, audio software, and electronic music in both freelance and institutional settings. In parallel, he develops software and creative tools through Many Sound Worlds, including MusicPad for iPad, an app designed to help musicians and composers write by hand in a direct and musical way. His development work grows out of the same concerns as his music: clarity, expression, and tools that support real creative practice.
At the center of Juan Verdaguer’s work is the idea that composing, performing, listening, teaching, designing, and building are not separate worlds, but connected ways of shaping sound and sharing it with others.
Many Sound Worlds is where those paths meet.