I CURATE!
-
Curations by:
The Matrix via ↴
Who I Am & Where I Live
-
Name:
Victor Gama
-
City:
Luanda
-
Country:
Angola
My Life & Work
-
Bio:
Victor Gama was born in Angola and currently lives between Luanda, Lisbon and Bogota. His work of musical composition intersects areas as diverse as music, image, field recording, audio-video installation and the design of contemporary musical instruments. Gama has been commissioned work by ensembles and institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Performing Arts Association, the National Museums of Scotland, the Tenement Museum in New York, Prince Claus Fonds, the Amsterdam Fonds for the Arts, the Royal Opera House of London or the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.
A graduate in Electronics Engineering and a Master's degree in Organology and Music Technology from the Sir John Cass College of Art, Architecture and Design at London Metropolitan University, he was recently guest artist at the Stanford University Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics in California and the MIT Center for Arts Science and Technology. He composed for the Kronos Quartet, who premiered his piece 'Rio Cunene' at Carnegie Hall in New York with a European premiere at the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon. The multimedia piece 'Vela 6911'premiered at the Harris Theater in Chicago commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra/MusicNOW and the support of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Vela6911 was further presented at the Dinkelspiel Auditorium in Stanford and at the Hous der Kultur der Welt in Berlin. Gama's multimedia opera '3 thousand RIVERS' commissioned by the Prince Claus Fund and the Gulbenkian Foundation premiered in Lisbon in 2016 and in Bogota in 2017. 'Aisa Tanaf: the Book of Winds' premiered in February 2017 at the Kennedy Center with musicians from the National Symphony Orchestra directed by Edwin Outwater.
Gama has been at the origin of projects such as Berimbau-Ungu with Naná Vasconcelos and Kituxitouring in Southern Africa, the Folk Songs Trio with New York musicians William Parker and Guillermo E. Brown, Odantalan with Barbararo Martinez-Ruiz and Hugo Candelario, and the Makakata Exchange in South Africa with Diso Platges and the Kalahary Surfers.
In 1997 he started Tsikaya, an online platform of musicians from the interior of Angola. Among several works, Pangeia Instruments was released by Aphex Twin on Rephlex Records, Naloga, Oceanites Erraticus and Quatro Momentos were released by his own label PangeiArt.
Contact Information
-
Email:
victorgama@pangeiart.org
More
-
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
Gama's meditative solo pieces for the metallic acrux evoked both the Balinese gamelan and Cage's prepared piano, while his studies for the gleaming toha had the sophisticated simplicity of Howard Skempton or Ludovico Einaudi...
- John L. Walters, The Guardian
Fantastic desert music from radical experimentalist Victor Gama on Naloga album ...
- Louise Gray, New Internationalist
Victor Gama is a composer whose process begins with the creation of an entirely new instrument, one whose design is steeped in symbolic meaning. Concept design, the selection of materials, fabrication, and scoring is all part of the rigorous way Gama creates new music for the 21st century, blending current fabrication technologies with ideas, materials, and traditions inspired by the natural world. "The post-digital world has circled back to the object. The same technology that has dematerialized the object is working to rematerialize it,” Gama said in his lecture/demonstration at MIT. "Innovations like 3D printing, digital CAD modeling and Finite Element Analysis have brought the potential to free the instrument from the fixed design paradigm and move beyond pre-sampled digital sound libraries with controller interfaces."
- Ania Ventura, Arts Research Writer at MIT
Clips (more may be added)
Share