Leo Alves Vieira
Leo Alves Vieira
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About Leo Alves Vieira
Brazilian, born in February 13th, 1978, at Rio de Janeiro. Leo Alves Vieira's parents both had musical experience. Portuguese father, Diniz, used to play violin in a priest school orchestra in Portugal, and Brazilian mother, Lucia, used to play the acoustic guitar and sing along with her friends, a successful Brazilian group called "Clube da Esquina", that recorded their first record with Milton Nascimento on vocals. She gave up her instrument to the MPB guitar player Francisco Horta, at that time a political prisoner of Brazilian dictatorship. Leo's grandfather, Mario Alves de Souza Vieira, father of Lucia, was killed by that dictatorship, tortured (impaled) to death. It seems that his revolutionary grandfather's blood runs in his veins. His musical energy is filled with struggles to musical patterns of all sorts, especially the so-called avant-garde academic scene around the western musical world... Though his influences relates to various avant-garde composers, as well as popular Brazilian and worldwide 'folk' traditions, Leo Alves Vieira tried to develop an intuitional composition process that flows equally between rational and emotional boundaries. He began his musical instruction in primary school at Niterói, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil along this school's choir, conducted by Hermano Vianna. Since then, he has had acoustic and electric guitar lessons with teachers from Rio and São Paulo as well (when he lived there from 1988 to 1992). In 1994, he entered a full musical education at the Rio de Janeiro State Conservatory, that included Classical Guitar lessons, Traditional and Functional Harmony. After a 2 year period in Philosophy unfinished graduation (1998-2000) at the Brazilian Federal University (UFRJ), he entered the Composition Graduation Course at the same institution (2001) where he continues his studies and also works as a researcher. His first professional artistic work was a musical score composed for a short movie called "O Fantasma do Theatro Municipal" written and directed by Luis Carlos Lacerda (1994). After some rock bands demo-tapes recorded, and a CD from band called GORE, shows an etc, he began a steady career into composing, signing musical directions, conducting and eventually playing for theater and short movies scores. Composing for theatre has given Vieira a great opportunity to study and establish a new musical language research within this medium. The organicity between the text, especially the ones written for children, and music is always the goal, without transforming the musical score primary to the theatrical performance, as it happens in musicals or plays for children, where 'all of the sudden' everything (named, the dramatical flow of the theatrical text) stops so that the music comes in and so forth. The compositional writing process developed by Leo at the academia scenario has the objective to filtrate the historical composing techniques into a personal writing style that blends the 'music for concerto' expression with the other media ways of listening and expressing music such as electroacoustic, jazz, traditional (popular) and rock/pop music. Using the standard instrumental formations of the 'music for concerto', chamber, orchestra or solo, this blending effect is a result not only of exploring new gestures (execution and feeling), taken from these other musical genres, but also from literally mixing up pre-recorded chamber sounds (electronically altered or not), for instance, with electroacoustic fabrics. Or even the other way round where we have electroacoustic timbres played live, in a chamber concerto format. In this case, either acoustic instruments altered in real-time or MIDI / Plugged electronic instruments are used. That was done by the time of his debut as a composer at the XV Biennial of Brazilian Contemporary Music, 2003, with the piece "Estilhaços-Constante Volta ao Indeterminado" (2002) for acoustic and electronic instruments, played by electroacoustic orchestra OFELEX. Another musical aspect has a very important role in Leo's music making and experimentations: rhythm. Polyrhythmical grids, exploring different rhythmical accents and variations, and, above them all, bringing some Brazilian feel to this so European influenced format that is the 'music for concerto', are among of the best results Leo Alves Vieira's music has achieved. Leo Alves Vieira's debut solo album "Sounds of the Orange Coloured Forest" was released September 2006 by Brooklyn, NY based Pralaya Records, and brings mostly his electroacoustic work between 2003 / 2006, which pairs chamber music and Brazilian rhythms. Some of the 11 pieces of this album has been featured in festivals, concerts and several radio shows around the globe, focused on electroacoustic music or even rock/pop music. Leo Alves' interest in video and image manipulation began in 1994, when he started composing for short-movies, in Lacerda's film "O Fantasma do Theatro Municipal". Until he had his own little digital camera, he did several experimentations with VHS, besides working as a producer in some other short-movies too, all of them shown at cinemas and movie clubs. He also studied acting with great Brazilian movie and theatrical play directors such as Moacir Chaves, Marcus Vinicius Faustini and Carlos Augusto Nazareth. Such experimentations involved collages and real time documentation on day-by-day living of anonymous normal people from the streets of Niterói, São Paulo, São Tomé das Letras (Minas Gerais) and Rio de Janeiro. The documentary aspect was always influenced by the ideas of Brazilian movie director Arnaldo Jabor, and his documentary technique in the '60s (by the time of Cinema Novo movement) called Cinema Verdade ("Truthful Cinema"). Nowadays, Leo Alves Vieira's production is focused on digital means of filming, especially, the exploration of light and texture on cheap digital equipment, which can result in many interesting effects one almost cannot capture on hi-tech sources. The editing work would either not interfere on these capturing effects or would enhance it creativity, seeking always a great variety of tasteful plasticity and form structure. Subjects are still connected to routine actions, only now we have other than people as players/actors (always anonymous, non-professionals), objects and places.
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