We’ve known guitarist Alejandro de Valera since the late 90’s, after we first met when he attended an early performance of ours in Paris. Specialising in fretless guitar, unique guitars without fret boards, which he custom builds as they are quite rare and not easy to buy, he became part of the team back in the early 2000’s, performing on a number of our projects.

Growing up in a musical family, Alejandro is the son of international French-Colombian composer and classical guitarist & lute player Alex de Valera. Learning music from his father as a small boy, Alejandro also attended France’s National School of Music – the Conservatoire de Pantin – first studying classical violin and classical guitar and then later jazz and electro acoustic music, tutoring under legendary Hungarian composer and saxophonist Yochk’o Seffer and the school’s director Sergio Ortega – the exiled Chilean composer and pianist (who was granted asylum in France after the 1973 coup in Chile). In the 1990’s Alejandro studied ethnomusicology at the Paris Diderot University, also known as University of Paris VII, where he composed several pieces for the Festival a l’Encre Fraîche (Fresh Ink Festival).

He’s now a guitar teacher, occasionally writes music for Radio France International, and being a member of Addictive TV has toured internationally with us, from all over Europe to India, USA, Russia and the Middle-East; notable performances include our project The Eye of the Pilot in Boston, USA, at Siggraph 2006 – the world’s largest digital arts event, and at the 50th Cork Film Festival in Ireland at Cork Opera House in Cork during the cities celebrations as 2005 European Capital of Culture and then the 2013 premiere of Orchestra of Samples in the both the UK and France. He lives in Paris with his family and has a very large collection of guitars! He also records under the name The Nebulae of Something.

2022 UPDATE NOTE:  Alex performed on our 2017 and 2018 UK tour (including at WOMAD and BBC Music Day), and at the Pompidou Centre in 2020 for a special show there, then in 2022 for the French Embassy at the French-Rendez-vous Festival in India.