Juan Manuel Abras was born in Stockholm, Sweden,[5] spent his childhood in Geneva, Paris and Madrid, his adolescence in Venice, Buenos Aires, and Bilbao, and his youth in Vienna and Kraków.

[6] As composer, Abras was a student of Krzysztof Penderecki, Kurt Schwertsik and Roberto García Morillo, he also studied with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Helmut Lachenmann, Wolfgang Rihm, Alexander Müllenbach, etc.

As pianist, Abras began his studies with his mother, he continued them with Giovanni Umberto Battel, Luis Fernando Barandiarán, Ana Litovsky-Grünwald, Elizabeth Fiocca, etc.

[12] The Spanish academic field has gathered that Abras' music is "cosmopolitan and multifaceted, in search of a balance between emotion and reason, a dialogue between past and future, tending towards the Absolute"[13] and that "it contains influences from the composers with whom he studied, such as Penderecki, Stockhausen, Lachenmann and Rihm, equally nourishing from concepts such as anamnesis, union of the opposites, numinosity, ekphrasis and intertextuality".

Those works have been performed at a hundred venues throughout the world: International Mozarteum Foundation (Austria), Teatro Colón (Argentina), Bimhuis-Muziekgebouw aan 't IJ (Netherlands), Filharmonia Łódzka im.

Artura Rubinsteina (Poland), Kunstquartier Bethanien Berlin (Germany), Théâtre Dunois in Paris (France), Columbia University (United States), Balassi Institute (Belgium), St James's Church, Piccadilly (United Kingdom), Longoria Palace (Spain), International Research and Information Centre 'Thracica' (Bulgary), Nádasdy Ferenc Múzeum (Hungary), Conservatorio Luisa D'Annunzio (Italy), York University (Canada), Palacio de Bellas Artes (Mexico), Summart Arts Center (Turkey), University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna (Austria), Kirchner Cultural Centre (Argentina), Academy of Music in Krakow (Poland), Hellerau - Europäisches Zentrum der Künste Dresden (Germany), California State University (USA), Fundación Museo Jorge Oteiza (Spain), Associazione Cultura e Musica G. Curci (Italy), University of Ottawa (Canada), Museo Nacional de Arte (Mexico), Altes Rathaus Vienna (Austria), Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (Argentina), National Museum Kraków (Poland), Kulturrathaus Dresden (Germany), University of Missouri (United States), Conservatorio Superior de Música de Navarra (Spain), Universidad Autónoma Benito Juárez de Oaxaca (Mexico), Palais Pálffy (Austria), etc.