ELI-ERI MOURA

Eli-Eri Moura (b. March 30, 1963) is an active Brazilian composer, researcher and conductor, presently working at the Federal University of Paraíba, Brazil, as a professor in the undergraduate and graduate programs of music.

He studied composition in Brazil with José Alberto Kaplan and Mário Ficarelli, and obtained the degrees of Bachelor of Music in Piano (1985) and Specialist in Twentieth Century Music (1987) from the Federal University of Paraíba, João Pessoa.

Sponsored by Fundação CAPES of the Brazilian government, he moved to Montreal, Canada, in 1989, to study at the prestigious McGill University, where he pursued the degree of Master of Music in Composition under the supervision of the Argentinean-Canadian composer Alcides Lanza. Due to his outstanding academic performance, he had his name included in the Dean's Honour List at the Graduation ceremony. Subsequently, Eli-Eri Moura was awarded the Max Stern Fellowship in Music, granted by the McGill University, and obtained the degree of Doctor of Music in Composition from the same university under the supervision of the composers Brian Cherney and John Rea.

The works of Eli-Eri Moura include more than 100 titles: pieces for diverse chamber groups, choir and orchestra, as well as music for theater plays, videos and films. His concert music has been played in Brazil and abroad by important performers (e.g., Quinteto Villa-Lobos, Ensemble Antipodes, New Mexico Symphony Orchestra, Chicago a Cappella, LSU Chamber Singers). His choral works are being published by Cantus Quercus Press in the USA.

The composer has also taken part in several important contemporary music festivals, among them the Biennial Festival of Brazilian Contemporary Music (Rio de Janeiro), Festival Música Nova (São Paulo) and MusiOctober New Music Festival (Montreal). In 2002 he was selected as the only Brazilian composer to represent his country in the World Music Days Festival of the International Society for Contemporary Music – ISCM, the most prominent event of contemporary music in the international scenario (held that year in Hong Kong).

Currently, part of his concert music is being recorded on two CDs, thanks to two different Brazilian grants. The first CD, to be launched very soon under the auspices of the Paraíba State Government, is titled Eli-Eri Moura: Música de Câmara/Chamber Music. The second one, titled Eli-Eri Moura: Música Instrumental/Instrumental Music, is sponsored by the Ministério da Cultura (Brazilian Ministry of Culture) and Programa Petrobrás Cultural, the leading national program in Brazil to promote culture. Competing with 3.480 projects in an open contest, Eli-Eri Moura's project was included among the 171 winners. The CD is planned to be launched still in 2006.

Several of the soundtracks composed by Eli-Eri Moura have been awarded prizes in Brazilian festivals, including the 10th Vitória Cine Vídeo Award for Best Music, for the film Transubstancial, in 2003. Samples of his soundtracks for theater plays and videos are in the CD Eli-Eri Moura: Trilhas, launched by Fundação Espaço Cultural da Paraíba (FUNESC) in 1996.

Very committed with musical research, in recent years Eli-Eri Moura has been concerned with developing a compositional process he calls Defragmental Music, applied to his concert music (in works such as Circumsonantis for string quartet, and Noite dos Tambores Silenciosos for symphony orchestra). This process recreates and synthesizes several procedures of contemporary music, and interacts, in a structural way, with references from Brazilian popular musical manifestations, whose elements are explored from within their microdimensional aspects – "defragmentation processes".

His articles about his own former compositional approaches and about compositional procedures developed by other composers are published in periodicals such as Contemporary Music Review, Em Pauta, Per Musi and Musica Hodie. Presently, he writes his first book – The Study of Tonal Harmony: a Compositional Approach Based on Gestalt Theory. He has also worked as a lecturer in several important Brazilian universities (e.g., Universidade de São Paulo – USP, Universidade Federal do Paraná – UFPR, Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte – UFRN), and as a juror in national composition competitions (e.g., Concurso Nacional de Composição Camargo Guarnieri).

While his major compositional concern has been primarily concert music that involves the exploration of new paths for the contemporary musical language, it is noteworthy that, concomitantly, the composer also works with a language that encompasses a more conventional musical lexicon, employed especially in some of his choral pieces and in his incidental music.

Eli-Eri Moura also worked for several years as a conductor. He directed the Madrigal of the Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal (1986 and 1987) and the University Choir of Paraíba, João Pessoa (1985 to 1989; 1992 to 1996). With the University Choir of Paraíba he recorded the institutional CD Eli-Eri Moura: Requiem Contestado (one of his pieces – for soloists, choir and chamber orchestra), launched in 1996 by the Federal University of Paraíba.

Eli-Eri Moura has developed activities in the educational field as well since 1984. He was a teacher of Harmony, Counterpoint and Musical Analysis in the Paraíba State School of Music and now is a Professor of Composition in the Federal University of Paraíba. In this university he founded COMPOMUS – Laboratório de Composição Musical (Laboratory of Musical Composition). As the current director of COMPOMUS, he conducts several composition-related projects that include promotion of new music, research, concerts, issuing of new scores and, in special, courses for young people and amateur composers. Emerging from these courses, approximately 20 composers trained by Eli-Eri Moura formed the New Composers of Paraíba Group, which has been very involved in the creation and promotion of contemporary music in the northeast region of Brazil.

E-mail Contact

elierimoura@hotmail.com
eli-eri.moura@mail.mcgill.ca

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