Biography
Victor Gama (Angola 1960) is a composer, performer, designer of innovative musical instruments as well as an electronics engineer. Gama has recently collaborated with the Kronos Quartet who premiered his piece "Rio Cunene" at Carnegie Hall in March 2010. He was commissioned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra to write "Vela 6911" his new piece premiered at Harris Theater, Chicago in 2012. His piece "Rio Cubango", commissioned by the the Prince Claus Fund and the Amsterdam Fund for the Arts has been presented in November 2011 at the Concertgebow in Amsterdam.
Several of his music works have been recorded on CD including Pangeia Instrumentos for Aphex Twin's Rephlex Records.
He has exhibited his instruments and sound installations and performed extensively in Africa, Latin America, USA, Canada and Europe, having received a Project Development Award by Visiting Arts/British Council for his exhibition and performance at Ormeau Baths Gallery in Belfast in 2004.
Gama initiated the “Berimbau-Ungu” project with the legendary Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos with whom he has toured in Southern Africa. He is part of The Folk Songs Trio with William Parker and Guillermo E. Brown, a collaboration originated from a commission by the Lower East Side Tenement Museum in New York.
The FSTrio has since played in the US, Portugal and Austria. Gama has participated at Artificial Afrika, an exhibition in New York curated by Vernon Reid and C. Daniel Dawson. He has recorded and played live with celebrated British sound artist Max Eastley and recently completed a commission for the National Museums of Scotland in Edingburgh of four innovative interactive musical instruments now on permanent display at the new Performance and Lives gallery.
In the early 90’s Gama initiated the Pangeia Instrumentos series of contemporary musical instruments, devices and installations in which he experiments with the phenomenon of metamorphosis of instruments and musical crafts that span the period from pre-history to our days. He has since been developing The Golian Modes Theory, a process that redirects the focus on composition for instruments with a fixed design to instruments in which design is a variable.
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