David Pastor

A circumstantial child of emigration, he was born in Germany, but, as he himself explains, his biography began in Sedaví, Valencia, where he was brought up and where he began studying music at the age of nine. The trumpet came about somewhat by chance, as he explains on his website with a fine sense of humour: “I chose the trumpet because I arrived late and the bassoons had run out”. And between one class and the next he absorbed the breath of African American music: “I soon came into contact with musicians who improvised. With them I discovered the blues and jazz”. At sixteen he began playing professionally with some dance orchestras, and in 1995, at the age of twenty-one, he settled in Barcelona to embark on a career that has led him to perform with figures of the highest international standing. He rejects being pigeonholed and embraces any genre thanks to the versatility of his trumpet, but he acknowledges that the blues gives meaning to everything he plays and that it seduces him for its honesty: “To be able to play the blues you have to show yourself as you are”.