Antonio Jose was born on 12th December 1902 in Burgos, Spain. He was praised by Maurice Ravel as one who would 'become the greatest Spanish musician of our century', but his arrest and execution near his home city of Burgos in 1936 during the Spanish Civil War cast his music into a subsequent obscurity which has only recently been remedied.

Back then Burgos was a rather small city removed from the cultural concerns of Madrid or Barcelona. Despite this, the young musician made a name for himself and before he was twenty he was awarded a grant to continue his studies in Madrid. In 1920, at the age of eighteen, Jose was appointed orchestral conductor of the Teatro de la Latina, a...