José Miguel Fernández studied music and composition at the University of Chile and the Musical Production and Research Laboratory (LIPM) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1996. In 2000, he moved to Lyon, France, to take composition lessons through the Conservatoire de Paris. From 2005 to 2006, he participated in the Cursus Program in Composition and Computer Music at IRCAM alongside Philippe Leroux.

In 2014, he joined IRCAM’s composer-in-residence program in musical and artistic research on interaction in mixed-music works. Starting in 2018, he carried out a second residency at IRCAM in partnership with the Société des Arts Technologiques in Montreal. His project was to write electronics for the audiovisual project Las Pintas.

Between 2017 and 2023, still at IRCAM, Fernández undertook a doctorate in music research and composition under the direction of Jean-Louis Giavitto and Pierre Couprie in the Sciences and Technologies Music and Sound joint research unit financed by the Collegium Musicæ institute of the Sorbonne University. In his dissertation, entitled “Vers un système unifié d’interaction et de synchronisation en composition électroacoustique et mixte: les partitions électroniques centralisées” (Toward a Unified Interaction and Synchronization System for Electroacoustic and Mixed Media Composition: Centralized Electronic Scores), he developed the notion of a score, making it possible to define and control all electronic, interaction, and synchronization processes within a single environment and integrate musical, gestural, and visual events.

Fernández’s principal areas of interest lie in sound spatialization, precise writing for electronics (with the aim of attaining the same degree of specificity as for instrumental music), and new tools for creating mixed and electroacoustic music. These tools are fundamentally based on a synchronous language and a dynamic synthesis system that allows processes to be created and deleted in real time. During his doctorate, he developed the AntesCollider library, which uses the Antescofo language to control the SupperCollider synthesizer. His piece Sources Rayonnantes (Radiant Sources), commissioned by IRCAM for the ManiFeste 2023 festival, was created entirely using the AntesCollider.

Fernández lets sound guide his music’s delivery. Using the full range of treatment, synthesis, and analysis techniques in conjunction with instruments, he creates compositions in which different sound morphologies interweave, passing through different states, from chaos to contemplation.

His pieces have been premiered around the world at events such as Journées Grame, the Biennale Musique en Scène in Lyon, Archipel Festival in Geneva, Wasserspeicher in Berlin, Fabbrica Europa in Florence, EMS in Shanghai, Imatronic at ZKM in Karlsruhe, RomaEuropa Festival in Rome, the Traiettorie festival in Parma, and the Bendigo International Festival of Exploratory Music in Australia.

His music has been played by ensembles such as Ensemble Atelier XX-21, Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain, ensemble Unitedberlin, Ensemble Vortex, Trio de Bubar, and by soloists such as Claude Delangle, Roméo Monteiro, Thierry Miroglio, and Philippe Spiesser.

Fernández’s work has been commissioned by the Chilean government, the French state, Grame–Ensemble Orchestral Contemporain (EOC), EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO, Aujourd’hui Musiques, and the Venice Biennale, among others. In 2000, he was selected for the Bourges International Electro-Acoustic Music Competition. In 2008, he won the Grame-EOC international composition competition in Lyon and in 2010, the Giga Hertz Award from ZKM/EXPERIMENTALSTUDIO in Germany.

Alongside composing, Fernández works on a variety of educational and creative projects involving computer music.