Pedro M. Rocha

Composer Pedro M. Rocha was born in Torres Novas in 1961. From 1981 to 1986 he studied music at the Lisbon National Conservatoire, with Gilberta Paiva and Olga Prats (piano), as well as composition with Jorge Peixinho, Álvaro Salazar and mainly Christopher Bochmann, under whom he graduated in 1990 at Lisbon Superior School of Music. From 1982 to 1990, he attended the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation’s Composition Seminaries with Emmanuel Nunes and then went to study microtonalism with Alain Bancquart, in Paris (Gulbenkian F. scholarship), where from 1992 to 1993 he attended a Composition and Computer course at the IRCAM. He also attended several workshops and seminaries about various subjects: Piano; Electroacoustic Music, Choir and Orchestra Conducting, Singing and Vocal Technique. His music includes orchestral pieces – with and without choir; a capella choir; chamber music often using pre-recorded sounds; pure acousmatic works, some with video. He is interested in the expansion of form and of musical parameters. Different works have different kinds of openness/ improvisation - “Dual”, “To a free world”, “To a world free from beliefs” – that contrast with totally closed ones like the acousmatic: “To a world free from religions”, “To a word free from countries”, “Composição I” and “Simbioses”. (text by Pedro M. Rocha)

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