Antonio Serrano, National Award for Contemporary Music 2025

Harmonica player Antonio Serrano has been honored this Wednesday with the 2025 National Award for Contemporary Music, granted annually by the Ministry of Culture, ... through the National Institute of Performing Arts and Music (INAEM) and comes with a prize of 30,000 euros.

This was announced by the department led by Ernest Urtasun, which indicated that the jury decided this year to award the prize to Antonio Serrano "for his contribution to such diverse genres as flamenco, jazz, folk, pop, and classical music, through excellence and originality as a harmonica player, which he demonstrated in notable 2024 projects like 'Flamenco Messengers' and 'Porter & Gershwin'".

Furthermore, it highlighted that as a performer, composer, and arranger "he has brought the chromatic harmonica to levels of creativity and projection that are out of the ordinary, participating in benchmark projects such as his collaborations with Paco de Lucía, Jorge Pardo, and Federico Lechner, reaching new audiences and expanding the horizons of this instrument both within and outside of Spain, also noting his teaching activities."

Antonio Serrano (Madrid, 1974) began his training at the age of seven under the guidance of his father, who developed his own teaching method with the harmonica as the main instrument. Later, he studied piano, violin, percussion, music reading, harmony, Music History, Art History, choral ensemble, and aesthetics at conservatories in Madrid and Alicante.

"Virtuosity" as a Harmonica Player

The Ministry of Culture has pointed out that his "virtuosity" as a harmonica player led him, while still a teenager, to accompany maestro Larry Adler at a United Nations concert in Paris alongside Barbara Hendricks and Plácido Domingo, a milestone that marked the beginning of his professional career in the early 90s.

"Currently, Serrano is one of the most sought-after session musicians in our country. His versatility has allowed him to make forays into the realms of jazz, classical music, and pop, although he particularly stands out for his contributions to the world of flamenco, in which he introduced the harmonica to this musical genre as a member of Paco de Lucía's group from 2004 until the artist's death in 2014," it emphasized.

He has also been part of the programming at the National Center for Musical Diffusion (CDNM) of the INAEM in recent years, where he has performed solo and alongside other great musicians.

Among his most recent works, he premiered in November 2020 his adaptation for harmonica and orchestra of 'El sombrero de tres picos' by Manuel de Falla and the project called 'Bach & Bach' alongside Daniel Oyarzábal and Pablo Martín Caminero, which he presented in February 2021.

Last year he premiered 'Porter & Gershwin', accompanied by pianists Federico Lechner and Ignasi Terraza, an album in which Serrano's harmonica replaces the voice in compositions by George Gershwin and Cole Porter, two key creators in last century's popular music and jazz.

Also in 2024, he premiered 'Flamenco Messengers', in which he brings together young musicians from the realms of jazz and flamenco to showcase a broad and eclectic repertoire.

The jury, chaired by the general director of INAEM, Paz Santa Cecilia Aristu, and acting as vice president the deputy director general of Music and Dance, Ana Belén Faus Guijarro, was composed of journalist Alejandra García Ramo, stage manager Armando Ruah Cohen, coordinator of the state music circuit Girando Por Salas (GPS) Juan Manuel Cantos Ruiz, musicians Víctor Manuel and Juan Aguirre (duo Amaral), cultural manager Almudena Heredero (representing the Association of Women in the Music Industry - MIM) and the last recipient of the National Award for Contemporary Music Miren Iza Cia 'Tulsa'.