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

Compositions

Though Kampela has been associated with the New Complexity 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.) Kampela's rhythmic and timbral techniques are sometimes framed by a reference to Theatre of the Absurd 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 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 The Austrian Cultural Forum New York (ACFNY) is one of Austria's two cultural representation offices in the United States; the other is in Washington, D.C. It is part of the worldwide network of Austrian Cultural Forums overseen by the Federal ...

, and by ensembles such as the

New York Philharmonic The New York Philharmonic is an American symphony orchestra based in New York City. Known officially as the ''Philharmonic-Symphony Society of New York, Inc.'', and globally known as the ''New York Philharmonic Orchestra'' (NYPO) or the ''New Yo ...

, Ensemble Linea, Momenta Quartet, Tokyo Gen'On Project, Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin, and

Ensemble Modern Ensemble Modern is an international ensemble dedicated to performing and promoting the music of contemporary composers. Formed in 1980, the group is based in Frankfurt, Germany, and made up variously of about twenty members from numerous countri ...

Career

Kampela has taught composition at

Columbia University Columbia University in the City of New York, commonly referred to as Columbia University, is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Churc ...

New York University New York University (NYU) is a private university, private research university in New York City, New York, United States. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded in 1832 by Albert Gallatin as a Nondenominational ...

Bates College Bates College () is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Lewiston, Maine. Anchored by the Historic Quad, the campus of Bates totals with a small urban campus which includes 33 Victorian ...

, and Escola de Música da UFRJ (

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (, UFRJ) is a public university, public research university in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the largest federal university in the country and is one of the Brazilian centers of excellence in teaching and r ...

Awards and Commissions

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are Grant (money), grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, endowed by the late Simon Guggenheim, Simon and Olga Hirsh Guggenheim. These awards are bestowed upon indiv ...

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 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 A music school is an educational institution specialized in the study, training, and research of music. Such an institution can also be known as a school of music, music a ...

where he studied with

Ursula Mamlok Ursula Mamlok ( Meyer; 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 Pr ...

. 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) is an American music theorist and composer. Best known for his work on musical grammar, Music cognition, cognition, Rhythm, rhythmic theory, and pitch space, he and the linguist Ray Jackendoff d ...

, 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)