Edson Zampronha

File:Edson Zampronha.jpg

Edson Zampronha

Edson Zampronha (born June 2, 1963) is a Brazilian composer from an Italian family. His contemporary classical music has attracted the attention of a wide ranging audience as a result of its highly expressive musical discourse; he has achieved this through the invention of a sophisticated musical rhetoric that operates on the notion of musical meanings, and a harmonic construction that introduces a new functionality in music. Re-interpretation is the key word in his music. By means of this key word all these musical features are achieved.

Biography

Edson Zampronha was born in Rio de Janeiro into a family of musicians. He started out his musical training at a young age at home. His first lessons included musical composition, history of music, theory, harmony, counterpoint and musical analysis, besides piano playing. His family moved from Rio de Janeiro to São Paulo in 1969. In 1978 he was introduced into electroacoustic music composition, and his first experiments were done in a four-channel Revox tape recorder.

In 1983 he starts the course on Music Composition and Conducting at the São Paulo State University. Two years before its conclusion he was invited to be a professor at the São Paulo Municipal School of Music. In 1991 he concludes a Master Degree in Musical Composition at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and in 1992 he starts a large and fruitful period as a professor of musical composition at the São Paulo State University. In 1998 he concludes the Doctorate on Communication and Semiotics – Arts, at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, where he first applied semiotic tools for music composition.

As of 1999 he starts an intense international agenda. In many opportunities he has been invited composer at outstanding studios as the Laboratory for Musical Informatics and Electronics at the Center for Diffusion of Contemporary Music (LIEM-CDMC, Madrid); the Phonos Foundation at the Pompeu Fabra University (Barcelona), and the Electroacoustic Music Studios of the University of Birmingham (England). He has developed two pos-doctorate researches to improve his theories on music and meaning, one at the University of Helsinki (Finland), in 2000, and another one at the University of Valladolid (Spain), in 2005. During this period the re-interpretation term was coined.

Since the 1990s his compositions have gone beyond the specialized circuits. He has received commissions from different groups and institutions, as from the Museum for Applied Arts, Cologne (Germany), in 2006; from the fashion designer María Lafuente for her catwalk show at the Pasarela Cibeles also in 2006 (Madrid, Spain), and from the São Paulo State Symphonic Band for the 100th Anniversary of Sao Paulo State Art Gallery, in 2005 (São Paulo, Brazil).

In 2006 one of the leading classic music labels in Brazil, Clássicos, releases a CD fully dedicated to his compositions for piano, for the first time including a CD dedicated to contemporary music in their collection.

In 2008 he interrupts a sequence of 16 years as a professor of musical composition at the São Paulo State University. He transferred his residency to León (Spain) and started a new period of musical composition and research.

The Music of Edson Zampronha

The keyword in the music of Zampronha is re-interpretation (or re-signification), understood as the act of understanding in a different way what had been previously listened to. This re-interpretation can be exemplified in three different aspects of his work.

This re-interpretation appears clearly in his extensive use of musical rhetoric resources. Zampronha’s main rhetoric strategy is first to induce the listener to understand the musical discourse in a specific way. Then, during the development of the work this understanding surprisingly changes to another one. There is a change of meaning in what we listen to. However, the first meaning never completely disappears. Thus, the old and the new understandings overlap, creating a highly dramatic effect that becomes the axis of the composition, grasping the listener attention from the very beginning of the work.

Another aspect of this re-interpretation can be found in the special use of sound materials and their references. A sound material can make references to a specific musical context or a specific historical period (even a very recent period) without being a quotation. When inserted in a different context (the musical work is this new context), a polyphony between references appears: something new dialogues with something known; the displacement of a reference from its original context create musical conflicts, and the meaning and values these references carry out give a historical and contextual perspective to the sound materials. In this way, new sound materials are more than isolated sound objects. The original use of their references can produce new musical expressivities and gestures that cannot be achieved by traditional means. Known sounds can be listened as never listened to, and new sounds can be listened as familiar ones.

Concerning his harmonic language, Zampronha uses non-traditional, perfectly intelligible chords comprising many notes (from 6 to 18, or even more). Instead of being aggressive, these chords are expressive and appealing, each chord concentrating a specific sensation or emotion in itself. These chords are unities that are fragmented by the use of specific extra-notes. In this sense, the concept of dissonance is re-interpreted. Another very interesting re-interpretation is that a specific sequence of these chords can generate a harmonic new-functionality, as if we were listening to purely harmonies and, at the same time, a kind of harmonic tension and resolution that produce some unique directionalities inside the work.

Different aspects of his compositions reflect these innovations, as the musical notation he uses and the relationship between instruments and electroacoustics for instance.

Recordings

His work is included in many CDs released by different labels and institutions. Two CDs are fully dedicated to his works:

CD Sensibile – released by Clássicos, this CD is dedicated to works for piano, including works for solo piano, piano four hands, and piano and electroacoustic sounds performed by the outstanding pianist Attilio Mastrogiovanni.

The works included are:

• Fragmentos Reduzidos de uma História Muito Longa (Reduced Fragments of a Very Large Story);
• Composição Para Piano a Quatro Mãos e Dois Comentários (Composition for Piano Four Hands and Two Comments) – performed with the special guest Achille Picchi
• Preludio (Prelude)
• Figuração Interpretada (Interpreted Figuration)
• Concerto para Piano e Sons Eletroacústicos (Concert for Piano and Electroacoustic Sounds)
• Bonus Track: Composição para Piano III (Composition for Piano III) – performed by Edson Zampronha.

CD Modelagens – released by the Group for Studies on Music, Semiotics and Interactivity, including works performed by some of the most outstanding Brazilian performers and abroad. The works included are:

• Modelagem XII (Sinfonia Cultura Orchestra, conducted by Lutero Rodrigues)
• Modelagem II (Beatriz Balzi, piano)
• O Crescimento da Árvore sobre a Montanha (The Growth of a Three on a Mountain) (Electroacoustic work)
• Modelagem III (Celina Charlier, flute)
• Mármore (Marble) – for tuba y electroacoustics (Jesús Jara, tuba)
• Modelagem VIII – for percussion and computer (Eduardo Gianesella, percussion)
• Fragmentation (electroacoustic works).

Books

Edson Zampronha has published the book:

• Notação, Representação e Composição (Notation, Representation and Composition) - São Paulo: Annablume, 2000 – in Portuguese.

This book is a demonstration of the capital importance of writing in the process of musical composition.

Edson Zampronha and Dr. Maria de Lourdes Sekeff have published the book series

• Arte e Cultura – Estudos Interdisciplinares (Art and Culture – Interdisciplinary Studies) – São Paulo: Annablume, in Portuguese, including four volumes at this moment.

This series is a collection of essays signed by outstanding artists-researches from the most important Brazilian Universities.

Awards

From the many awards received by Edson Zampronha, he has been awarded three times by the most important prizes in Brazil:

• He was awarded twice by the São Paulo Associations of Art Criticism, Brazil, for his works Toccata II (best solo work of 1993) and Modelagem VII (best ensemble work of 1997).
• In 2005 he was the winner of the 6º Sergio Motta Award, the most important Brazilian prize for art and technology, for his sound installations Atrator Poético (Poetic Attractor), created with Grupo SCIArts.

Works

Edson Zampronha’s catalog of compositions includes more than 70 compositions for orchestra, electroacoustic music, opera, sound installations, and chamber music. Some of his works are:

• Elegía (Elegy), for cello and electroacoustics (2009)
• Two Takes, for cello (2008)
• Ceremonia de Boda (Wedding Ceremony), for ensemble (2008)
• Inverno (Winter), for string orchestra and harpsichord or piano (2007)
• Tríptico (Triptych), for guitar (2007)
• Recycling, Collaging, Sampling – for 1 to 6 percussionists and electroacoustic sounds (2000–2006)
• Viaje al Interior (Travel to Inward), electroacoustic work (2006)
• Convergenza Sensibile (Sensitive Convergence), for orchestra (2006)
• Diante do Abismo (In Front of the Abyss), for Symphonic Band (2005)
• Composição para Piano a Quatro Mãos e Dois Comentários (Composition for Piano Four Hands and Two Comments), for piano four hands (1985–2005)
• Atrator Poético (Poetic Attractor), sound installation created with the SCIArts Group (2005)
• Lamenti, electroacoustic work (2004)
• Concerto para Piano e Sons Eletroacústicos (Concert for Piano and Electroacoustic Sounds) (2003–2004)
• Figuração Interpretada (Interpreted Figuration), for piano (2003)
• Perfurando a Linha (Drilling the Line), for viola (2002)
• Fragmentos Reduzidos de uma História Muito Longa (Reduced Fragmentos of a Very Large Story), for piano (2002)
• Modelagem XII, for orchestra (1999–2001)
• Evolon, for ensemble (1999)
• Modelagem X-a, for vibraphone (1997)
• Toccata II, for one percussionist (1992-3)
• Composição para Músicos e Atores (Composition for Musicians and Actors), Opera including chamber orchestra, chamber choir, percussions ensemble and two actors (1986)
• Composição para Piano III (Composition for Piano III) (1984)

External links

• www.zampronha.com (Webpage dedicated to Edson Zampronha, it includes samples of his work; several of his publications that can be downloaded, and many materials on the composer)
• www.myspace.com/zampronha (Zampronha’s Myspace webpage)
• www.youtube.com (Modelagem X-a, by Edson Zampronha, is performed by Augusto Morales in YouTube)
• www.fondation-langlois.org (Complete recording of the work Mármore (Marble), for tuba and electroacoustic sounds, performed by Jesús Jara. It includes the complete score and a comment on the work)
• www.sibetrans.com (Online publication of the text “Gesture In Contemporary Music”, by Zampronha, in English)
• www.badongo.com (Edson Zampronha and Attilio Mastrogiovanni are interviewed about the CD Sensibile, in Portuguese)
• [1] (Tom Moore interviews Edson Zampronha, in English)