José Luis Ansorena Miranda died on Wednesday in Pamplona/Iruña. From a very young age he began his musical studies in the conservatory of San Sebastian, where he studied harmony, piano and composition with Luis Urteaga and Beltrán Pagola. Then he went to the Capuchin seminary in Altsasu, where he was ordained a priest in 1953.

Under the protection of the Capuchins he developed countless initiatives related to music, including the creation of the San Antonio choir in the church of Pamplona of the same order, as well as in Zaragoza.

 

 

 

 

But Ansorena was also a composer and a music researcher, as for example, did a very important job of txistu and txistularis. His father, Hernaniarra Isidro Ansorena, was one of the largest txistularis in the 20th century.

His greatest contribution to the research was, however, in the 1970s in Errenteria, a town where he settled a few years earlier and where he founded the Coral Andra Mari and the choir Oinarri gazte abesbatza. For the Musikaste festival, launched in 1973, it was essential to create a fund of Basque compositions, in which Eresbil placed the first pillars of the Archivo Vasco de la Música, when he began collecting compositions for science and keeping them at the site of the Capuchins of Errenteria.

In addition, he wrote dozens of compositions and was organist in most of the places he lived in. Ansorena received several awards, one of them from the hand of Eusko Ikaskuntza in 2011, the Manuel Lekuona Prize which annually awards for the promotion of culture.

The fiery chapel will be in the Errenteria City Hall's auditorium on Thursday afternoon and will be buried on Friday in the Polloe cemetery.

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