Rafael Toral, born in Lisbon, 1967 has been intrigued by the potential of sound and the functions of music since he was a teenager. As a composer and performer, he has been deeply involved with Rock, Ambient, Contemporary, Electronic and Free Jazz music in different periods of his life.
Working with electric guitar and electronics, in the 1990’s he created a blend of Ambient and Rock and recorded acclaimed albums like Wave Field or Violence of Discovery and Calm of Acceptance. In 2004 he changed direction and launched the Space Program, using experimental electronic instruments. It was an ambitious long-term project (2004 to 2017) exploring an approach to electronic music based on silence, through decision making and physical gesture, in a way inspired by post-free Jazz. The resulting music, “melodic without notes, rhythmic with no beat, familiar but strange, meticulous but radically free”, has been described as “a brand of electronic music far more visceral and emotive than that of his cerebral peers”. During this period he directed the Space Quartet.
In 2014 he relocated to the mountains in central Portugal for a more sustainable life. In 2017, having concluded the Space Program, Toral has entered a wider field with multiple directions and possibilities, in fact a third phase, in which he returns to playing guitar and explores jazz harmonies along with Space Program instruments, as in Spectral Evolution (2024).