Jorge Antunes

Avant-garde composer Jorge Antunes is known as the man who pioneered electronic music in Brazil. During the ’50s and ’60s, he studied the violin, conducting, composition, and physics, and as a result of the latter wrote his “Cromoplastofonias” series. Starting in the late ’60s, he worked in electronic studios in Buenos Aires (with Alberto Ginastera and Umberto Eco, among others) and Paris, with Groupe de Recherches Musicales (with Pierre Schaeffer). He served as a professor, studio director, and orchestra conductor at the University of Brasilia. Over the years, he founded the Chromo-Music Research Studio and the new music ensemble Group of Musical Experimentation. In his compositions, Antunes has explored the relationship between sound and colors, flavors and odors (in “Ambiente I”), and ‘commented’ on work by Claude Levi-Strauss with a percussive performance art piece. He has won several awards including the International Tribune of Composer’s UNESCO prize twice in the ’90s. ~ Joslyn Layne