Born in Encarnación on September 24, 1953, the youngest of eight children of Basilio Szarán and Luisa Boreska arrived in Asunción at the age of 12 on a yerba mate truck, without money for the fare, driven by the conviction that music was his destiny. Luis Szarán, now one of the most iconic names in Paraguayan music, recalls that his childhood in Yuty, in the Caazapá department, where his father owned a rice field, was "long and full of silences" that he later learned to fill with music.
His first contact with the classical guitar was clandestine. His mother, who considered a musical career madness, did not support his dream. By the age of eight, Szarán was already playing secretly with neighbors, and by eleven, he was reading sheet music and composing his first pieces. The moment that ignited the flame was hearing Sila Godoy at school: "How could someone do that with a wooden box? I think that’s when it all started."
It was conductor José Luis Miranda, then director of the National Symphony Orchestra, who heard him play, convinced the family, and brought him to Asunción. Miranda trained him from master to disciple—a relationship Szarán holds with lasting gratitude—and was also responsible for the training of Berta Rojas. At 17, the premiere of his first work, Opus 1, was a failure. The musicians got lost, the audience didn’t understand anything, and the young composer locked himself in the bathroom, crying, making a promise: to study orchestral conducting to "respectfully perform the works of others." That was the turning point in his career.
In 1975, a scholarship from the Italian government took Szarán to the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome, where he studied orchestral conducting. Before that, he had refined his skills at the Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires with Hans Swarowsky, a world-renowned figure at the time. Since 1978, he has led the Asunción City Symphony Orchestra (OSCA), and since 1990 as principal conductor—nearly five decades in the role, making him the longest-serving director in the orchestra’s history. During this time, he has conducted over 2,500 concerts on stages in Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the United States, and South America.
With about sixty works in his catalog, Szarán also published the Dictionary of Music in Paraguay in 1999, a years-long project he considers one of his most lasting contributions. Among the projects he has led are Sonidos de mi tierra, H20, and the Cateura Orchestra, always aiming to bring music closer to the most remote corners of the country. Despite the progress, he believes Paraguay still needs to "make the leap to excellence" and nurture new names like Mangoré and José Asunción Flores.
His personal life, however, paid the price for his dedication. Szarán married at 19 and had his first child, but successive divorces came precisely because of the strain of a career that took him to spend 15 years conducting an ensemble in Venice, with constant comings and goings. In Italy, he learned the so-called "dolce vita" and discovered a second passion in cooking—today he collects recipes from around the world. "I simply can’t imagine life without music," he sums up. "I came to Asunción on a yerba mate truck, but with a certainty I couldn’t explain. More than sixty years later, time has shown it was true."