Arthur Kampela is a Brazilian-American composer, guitarist, and songwriter.

Compositions

Though Kampela has been associated with the

New Complexity New Complexity is a label principally applied to composers seeking a "complex, multi-layered interplay of evolutionary processes occurring simultaneously within every dimension of the musical material". Origins Though often atonal, highly abstract ...

movement, his style evolves out of extreme extended-technique improvisational practices which remap the ergonomics of one instrument onto another (percussion onto guitar, or guitar onto viola). An important aspect of Kampela's music is his development of ''micro-metric modulation'', a formula for precisely controlled transition from any polyrhythm to any other polyrhythm, without either of the tempos of the respective polyrhythms being directly related. (He has also participated in activities that revive the theories and practices of Swiss-Brazilian musician

Walter Smetak Anton Walter Smetak (Zurich, Switzerland, 13 February 1913 – Salvador, Brazil, 30 May 1984) was a Swiss-born musician, composer, writer, sculptor and producer of musical instruments. Life and works Walter Smetak was born in Zurich of Czec ...

.) Kampela's rhythmic and timbral techniques are sometimes framed by a reference to

Theatre of the Absurd The Theatre of the Absurd (french: théâtre de l'absurde ) is a post–World War II designation for particular plays of absurdist fiction written by a number of primarily European playwrights in the late 1950s. It is also a term for the style of ...

and combined with electronics. Another aspect of Kampela's music is the fusion of vernacular Brazilian roots (bossa novas and samba) with subversive wordplay lyrics and atonal harmonies, which can be heard in his 1988 LP ''Epopéia e Graça de uma Raça em Desencanto…'' (‘Epic and Grace…’) Although the 1988 album is of a more vernacular-popular genre, Kampela's later compositional style grows organically out of his earlier practices as a composer-guitarist-singer as represented on this album. As

Alejandro L. Madrid Alejandro Luis Madrid-González (born August 25, 1968) is an American music scholar, cultural theorist, and professor, whose research focuses on Latino and Latin American musics and sound practices. He is professor of musicology and ethnomusicolog ...

puts it:

"Brazilian Arthur Kampela developed a personal language that reads popular and traditional Brazilian music styles, genres, and techniques through the aesthetics of New Complexity and Elliott Carter’s notion of metric modulation, including his series of Percussion Studies for solo guitar."

Kampela's compositions, particular his ''Percussion Studies'' for Guitar, have been performed numerous times around the world (North America, South America, Europe, and Asia), resulting in dozens of renditions on YouTube, at the Tanglewood Contemporary Music Festival, the Austrian Cultural Forum New York, and by ensembles such as the New York Philharmonic, Ensemble Linea, Momenta Quartet, Tokyo Gen'On Project, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and Ensemble Modern.

Career

Kampela has taught composition at

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then-Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin. In 1832, the ...

, Bates College, and Escola de Música da UFRJ ( Federal University of Rio de Janeiro).

Awards and Commissions

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

2014 *

DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program The DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program (German: Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD) is a residential program for artists of all countries and ages run by the German Academic Exchange Service (German: ‘Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst', DAAD ...

2012-13 * Fromm Foundation grant *International Guitar Composition Competition (Caracas, Venezuela) 1995 *Lamarque-Pons Guitar Composition Competition (Montevideo, Uruguay) 1998 *

New York Guitar Festival The New York Guitar Festival is a music festival founded by radio host and author John Schaefer and musician, producer and curator David Spelman, who serves at the festival's Artistic Director. Since 1999, the festival "has been examining virtually ...

2008

Education

Kampela attended Conservatório Brasileiro de Música, Centro Universitário, then

Manhattan School of Music The Manhattan School of Music (MSM) is a private music conservatory in New York City. The school offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in the areas of classical and jazz performance and composition, as well as a bachelor's in mu ...

where he studied with

Ursula Mamlok Ursula Mamlok (February 1, 1923 – May 4, 2016) was a German-born American composer and teacher. Education and influences Mamlok was born as Ursula Meyer in Berlin, Germany, into a Jewish family, and studied piano and composition with Professor G ...

. He continued his studies at

, principally with

Mario Davidovsky Mario Davidovsky (March 4, 1934 – August 23, 2019) was an Argentine-American composer. Born in Argentina, he emigrated in 1960 to the United States, where he lived for the remainder of his life. He is best known for his series of compositions ca ...

and

Fred Lerdahl Alfred Whitford (Fred) Lerdahl (born March 10, 1943, in Madison, Wisconsin) is the Fritz Reiner Professor Emeritus of Musical Composition at Columbia University, and a composer and music theorist best known for his work on musical grammar and cogn ...

, and earned a DMA (1998) degree. (He also studied privately with

Brian Ferneyhough Brian John Peter Ferneyhough (; born 16 January 1943) is an English composer. Ferneyhough is typically considered the central figure of the New Complexity movement. Ferneyhough has taught composition at the Hochschule für Musik Freiburg and ...

in 1993.)

Selected works

* Percussion Studies for Guitar, Nos. 1, 2, and 3 * A Knife all Blade, ma faca só lâmina - after Joao Cabral(string quartet) * Phalanges, for solo harp (1995) * Macunaíma, for orchestra * Happy Days, for solo flute and electronics * Exoskeleton, for solo viola * Naked Singularity, for solo tuba * ...tak-tak...tak... * Antropofagia, for electric guitar and large ensemble * Between Fingers and Mouth (2022)

Publications

*"Micro-Metric Rhythms and Noises Emanations from the Stochastic Cloud", In Sharon Kanak (ed.) ''Xenakis Matters'', New York: Pendragon Press: 341–362 *"The Exile of the Metric in the Dance of Pulsation", 2020, ''Journal MusMat'', 4(1): 63–80 *"A Knife All Blade: Deciding the Side Not To Take", ''Current Musicology'', 67/68: 167–193.

References

Listening

''Percussion Study 1 for Guitar'' (1990), Marisa Minder, guitar''Percussion Study 1 for Guitar'' (1990)
Gian Marco Ciampa, guitar
''Percussion Study 1 for Guitar'' (1990), Rob MacDonald, guitar''Percussion Study 1 for Guitar'' (1990), Rémi Jousselme, guitar''Between Fingers and Mouth'', quintet, (2022) (world premiere)''Phalanges'' (1995,) Jacqui Kerod, harp

External links

Fromm Foundation portraitLecture at IRCAMFestival of KampelaEnsemble Modern's Re-inventing Smetak Escavador portrait2009 New York Philharmonic premiere of Macunaíma
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kampela, Arthur American classical composers American male classical composers Columbia University alumni 20th-century classical composers 21st-century classical composers Living people 21st-century American composers 20th-century American composers 20th-century American male musicians 21st-century American male musicians Composers for the classical guitar Brazilian musicians Year of birth missing (living people)