Ernesto Rodrigues

Performer and composer Ernesto Rodrigues was born in Lisbon 1959. He has been playing the violin for 30 years and in that time has played all genres of music ranging from contemporary music to free jazz and free improvisation, live and in the studio. As an avant-garde violinist/violist his main interest shifted towards contemporary improvised and new music as well as graphic scores by Gerhard Stäbler, Nikolaus Gerszewski and Phil Niblock. Studies with contemporary composers Eurico Carrapatoso, Emmanuel Nunes and Pedro M. Rocha. The relationship with his instruments is focused in sonic and textural elements as well as the use of extended techniques. Electronic music was an early influence on his approach to violin playing, which challenges traditional romantic concepts of the violin and viola through use of preparations and micro tuning. Silence plays an important and determinant role in his music. Has founded and directs Variable Geometry Orchestra since 2000. A large ensemble where the conduction is operated by balancing the sound masses that travel in the acoustic space, dictating the construction of the realtime composition, and thus revealing the organized juxtaposition of specific instruments as mobile sound groups. Has created music for films, dance, performance and video. (text by Ernesto Rodrigues)


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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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