Cristo Barrios is a clarinettist, chamber musician, researcher and educator whose international career spans classical and Romantic repertoire, twentieth-century music and new creation. He has appeared at venues including Wigmore Hall and Cadogan Hall in London, the Konzerthaus in Berlin and Vienna, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, Carnegie Hall in New York, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid, and the Palau de la Música in Barcelona and Valencia. As a chamber musician, he has collaborated with the Elias, Minetti, Endellion, Arditti and Brodsky string quartets, the Fauré Piano Quartett, and soloists including Romain Guyot, Asier Polo and Maxim Rysanov.
His engagement with new music has led to premieres and direct collaborations with composers. In 2012 he premiered Gustavo Díaz-Jerez's Ayssuragan with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under Antoine Marguier. In 2013 he gave the world premiere of Nino Díaz's Second Clarinet Concerto with the Mariinsky Orchestra under Valery Gergiev. In 2018 he performed the Spanish premiere of Einojuhani Rautavaara's Clarinet Concerto with the Tenerife Symphony Orchestra under Elim Chan. This interest in the relationship between composers and performers also became a focus of his academic research.
Barrios holds a PhD in Musicology from Complutense University of Madrid. In 2017 he defended his doctoral thesis, Composers and soloists: a qualitative research on creation and interpretative freedom in the contemporary repertoire for clarinet. His research involved direct work with composers including Einojuhani Rautavaara, Helmut Lachenmann, Kaija Saariaho and Jörg Widmann, as well as leading performers specialising in contemporary repertoire. In 2013 he co-founded Quantum Ensemble, with which he developed chamber-music activity between 2013 and 2021.
His discography includes The Voice of the Clarinet (Divine Art), XXth Century Music for Clarinet and Piano (Métier), IAMUS (Melomics), Robert Gerhard · Joaquim Homs (Columna Música), Deep Light (IBS Classical) and Maghek (Signum Classics), in which he appears as soloist in Ayssuragan with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra.
Since 2013 he has taught at Centro Superior Katarina Gurska in Madrid, where he currently teaches clarinet and Creative Improvisation. He has given masterclasses and workshops at institutions including the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, Sibelius Academy, Norwegian Academy of Music, Liszt Academy in Budapest, Hochschule für Musik und Tanz Köln, Strasbourg Conservatory, Zurich University of the Arts and the Metropolitan Orchestra's Higher Conservatory in Lisbon. He is an Honorary Associate of the Royal Academy of Music, London.
