PEDRO AMARAL

 

Works For Ensemble

 

Textos, Paráfrases, Perspectivas…, Spirales, Organa, Paraphrase

 

London Sinfonietta / Pedro Amaral

 

Building on the increasing success that the Atlantic Waves festival has achieved over the past 6 years, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation is launching a new CD series to promote Portuguese musicians and music internationally. Like the festival, the series aims to showcase diversity and uniqueness featuring collaborations between Portuguese and musicians from

around the world.

 

The first release,Works For Ensemble, by the young Portuguese composer Pedro Amaral (also his debut CD), was recorded by the London Sinfonietta at the Henry Wood Hall, London, in November 2006, and consists of four world premières in the best tradition (Berio, Boulez, Stockhausen…) of the classical contemporary genre.

 

Born in Lisbon in 1972, Pedro Amaral is one of the most dynamic European musicians of his generation.Whether as composer, conductor or musicologist, his work is characterised by a profound unity of thinking. He studied composition with Fernando Lopes-Graça and Emmanuel Nunes, and conducting with Emilio Pomàrico and Peter Eötvös. He was frequently a resident composer at IRCAM, and since 2005 has been Karlheinz Stockhausen's personal assistant for the revision of Momente.

 

"It is an excellent work that taught me a lot of things" Karlheinz Stockhausen on Pedro Amaral's PhD thesis, Le Monde de la Musique London Sinfonietta is widely acknowledged as one of the world's finest ensembles. Specialising in contemporary music, it works across a wide range of genres, performing modern classics alongside world premieres, and includes music by electronica artists as well as folk and jazz musicians. The ensemble places new music at the heart of contemporary culture, reaching out to new audiences and embracing the technical challenges of pushing musical boundaries. Since its foundation in 1968, the ensemble has been been committed to commissioning and performing works by both emerging and established composers. Its list of over 200 commissions reaches from its early support of Birtwistle, Xenakis and Berio to Tansy Davies, Dai Fujikura, Jonny Greenwood (from Radiohead) and Mark-Anthony Turnage.

 

Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation CGFCD1001