Josep Maria Ventura i Casas

Josep Maria Ventura i Casas (Alcalá la Real (Jaén), 1817 – Figueres (Catalonia), 1875), popularly known as Pep Ventura, was a Spanish musician and composer from Catalonia who consolidated the long sardana and reformed the cobla, adding instruments to give it its current formation.

His performance before the Queen Isabella II of Spain in the Monastery of Montserrat together with other artists of the Renaixença consecrated him as a figure in the Catalan cultural world.

He was born in Andalusia, where his father, a low-ranking military officer, was assigned to participate in the operations of repression of banditry that followed the War of Spanish Independence.

At the age of two years, the family moved again to Catalonia, to the Gironan town of Roses in 1819, when the father was assigned to that city.

He learned the office of tailor and notions of solfège from his future father-in-law, Joan Llandrich, director of the cobla that bore his name.