Born in Alicante, Javier Zafra studied Baroque Bassoon and chamber music at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Den Haag.

He was a member of the European Union Baroque Orchestra (EUBO) under the baton of Ton Koopman, and played solo bassoon parts with the best europeans ensembles, such as Anima Aeterna, Orchestre des Champs Elysées, Capella Cracoviensis (Jan Tomasz Adamus, with whom he played and recorded Mozart Bassoon Concerto in 2016), Concert de La Loge (Julien Chauvin) and Ensemble Balthasar Neumann among others.

He has worked with conductors such as Thomas Helgenbrock, Philippe Herreweghe, Gustav Leonhardt, René Jacobs, Pablo Heras-Casado, and Sir Simon Rattle.

Chamber music being his prime interest, he plays on a regular basis with Ensembles such as Nachtmusique (Eric Hoeprich), Ensemble Dialoghi (Lorenzo Coppola) – with whom he has recorded Mozart and Beethoven quintets for Piano and winds (Harmonia Mundi France, 2017), Kristian Bezuidenhout, Alexander Melnikov or Isabelle Faust – with whom he has recorded Schubert’s Octet and Stravinsky’s Histoire du Soldat on period instruments (Harmonia Mundi France; 2018 and 2020).

As a soloist, he performed in important venues such as KKL Luzern, Wigmore Hall (London) or in the Lincoln Center (New York), to name but a few.

Javier Zafra has been solo bassoonist of the Freiburger Barokorchester from 1999 till 2023, and he is bassoon solo of Ensemble Pygmalion since 2016 conducted by Raphaël Pichon and based in Paris, where he lives with his family.

After teaching at the Baden-Württembergische Ensemble-Akademie Freiburg and the Musikhochschule Freiburg, he teaches at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels since September 2018.