About Luís Antunes Pena

Luís Antunes Pena studied composition at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon with A. P. Vargas and attended the seminars given by E. Nunes at the Gulbenkian Foundation. He continued his study of instrumental music composition with N. A. Huber and G. Steinke, and of computerised music with D. Reith at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Essen and at the Institute for Computer Music and Electronic Media (ICEM). He took further inspiration from G. Grisey at the IRCAM Summer Academy (Paris, 1998). Together with the composers D. Ferreira and J. Miguel Pais he headed the annual International Festival of Contemporary Music “Jornadas Nova Música” in Aveiro, Portugal, from 1997 to 2002. Pena was awarded a bursary by the Portuguese Ministry of Science and Technology from 2000 to 2004, and he has received numerous distinctions. He was the winner, for example, of the “Eastman Computer Music Center 25th Anniversary International Electroacoustic Music Competition” in the United States, of the 11th composition competition at the Vienna Summer Academy of new music, of the “Óscar da Silva“ and „Lopes Graça” Competitions, and of the “32e Concours International de Musique et d’Art Sonore Electroacoustiques de Bourges”. He teaches computer music and analysis at the Hochschule für Musik Karlsruhe and has worked with, among others, the ZKM | Karlsruhe, Jeunesses Musicales Deutschland, the Deutscher Musikrat, the Philharmonie Essen, German radio, the Theater im Depot, the German Foreign Office, the Kasseler Musiktage, Miso Music, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon and the Christoph Delz Foundation in Basel. His compositions focus on exploring the use of computers and on various forms of instrumental and electronic resynthesis as a compositional procedure. Many of his recent pieces are particularly concerned with the rhythmic aspect of sound. In 2010 he was Composer in Residence at the Saint Peter’s Arts Centre in Cologne, and from April 2010 to March 2011 he lived and worked at the Internationales Künstlerhaus Villa Concordia in Bamberg.