Role: Composer, programmer (Max/MSP), producer (Logic). 

Research Context: This piece represents my first step into Critical Technical Practice. Written specifically as a preparatory etude for this application, I learned Max/MSP to investigate how custom algorithms could reshape fixed media recordings. 

Methodology: I selected a short piece of mine, previously written for chamber ensemble (2 cellos, 2 C flutes, 2 piccolos, Bb clarinet, nylon and electric guitars, piano, vibraphone, female voice), to be the database of this new work. Next, I built patches on Max/MSP to manipulate this material in 3 short distinct sections, using the thematic image of the nightingale (playfully referencing Milton Babbit’s “Philomel”) as the unifying motive. The final material was then mixed and mastered on Logic.

Role: Composer, arranger, performer.

Research Context: This is an investigation into intertextuality and the jazz canon. Rather than "arranging" Jerome Kern’s All The Things You Are, I treated the original score as a bank of raw material to be reconstructed / assembled, in three distinct ways (and as three distinct movements).

Methodology: By isolating, reassembling, and creating new pathways through specific musical aspects of this jazz standard, I interrogate the stability of the “standardised musical work," thereby transforming something familiar into new assemblages.

Role: Multi-instrumentalist, producer, programmer (Pro Tools, Logic).

Research Context: An exploration of microtonality and micro-rhythms from distinct  transcultural musical languages, blended with digital manipulation.

Methodology:  I first recorded instruments which are part of distinct musical traditions:  Turkish G-clarinet (with  material related to the two first ajnas of Maqam Hijaz), a Greek Aulos, a Marimacho de Puno from the Area Circum-Tititcaca (Bolivia and Peru), classical guitar, and kraqeb (performing gnawa rhythmic patterns). Using post-production manipulation, I created a layered structure of these "sound objects", which were later digitally manipulated. This project demonstrated the necessity of  computational analysis tools (such as Python/Music21) to properly map and visualize these complex microtonal and micro-rhythmic interactions in my future research.

Role: Composer, performer, producer. 

Research Context: A study in transcultural synthesis. This work proposes a mixture among tonal harmonies definitive of Brazilian choro, modal fluidity of Middle Eastern maqam (namely maqam Hijaz Kar) and symmetric harmony from the octatonic scales. It is part of a series of pieces entitled “Valencianas”, duos I wrote for – and recorded with – musicians from all over the world, each piece exploring aspects of their own musical traditions.

Methodology: The piece serves as a laboratory to determine how to maintain fluidity while moving through such distinct sound worlds, by identifying points of similarity.

Orpheus Institute Connection: Systemizing Practice: Towards a Computational Ethnomusicology

Context: This project is a systematization of compositional processes based on transcultural music practice. Here, I propose categories for the organization of musical material within transcultural compositional systems.

Connection to Future Research: Through my research process I realised that traditional analytical systems fail to capture certain nuances and complexities of this material, a gap I intend to fill through computational analysis and the development of Critical Technical Practice at Orpheus.

Orpheus Institute Connection: Interrogating the Canon: Formal Analysis of Re-signification.

Context: This paper presents a formal analysis of Maria Schneider's compositional methods,  specifically focusing on rhythm, harmony, and form, in her piece Choro Dançado. The core of the analysis is to examine the relationship between these aspects in Schneider's piece and the traditional elements of the Brazilian choro genre. By detailing how Schneider utilizes, reinterprets, and transforms this inherited material, the analysis directly addresses the process of re-signification within the contemporary musical canon.

Connection to Future Research: This project serves as an academic writing example that demonstrates my ability to perform formal, high-quality analysis and to rigorously theorize compositional processes. This foundation is essential for my proposed work at Orpheus.

Orpheus Institute Connection: Critical Technical Practice and Decentralized Authorship.

Research Context: This work, written by me in Brazil as an undergraduate paper in 2003, explores the concept of bricolage (Lévi-Strauss, Derrida) as an analytical framework for understanding musical creation in the 20th and 21st centuries. It analyzes how composers utilize and re-signify pre-existing material, creating an opportunity for  debates on intellectual property and decentralized compositional authorship. It also demonstrates my long-standing research interest in concepts such as decentralized authorship and 'patchwork' musical construction.

Methodology: The full analysis, originally conducted during my undergraduate studies, develops a four-part systematization of musical bricolage (referential, patchwork, source-based, and arrangement-based). The document submitted includes an English Extended Abstract (Opener), followed by the complete original paper in Portuguese containing the detailed musical examples and analysis.