Amadeus Regucera
The work of Amadeus Julian Regucera engages with the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and the erotics of its production. He has had the opportunity to present works around the world: notably, at ManiFeste, the Festival Musica, Voix Nouvelles (France), the Resonant Bodies Festival and the SONiC Festival (New York), the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music as part of the American Composers Forum artist delegation to Cuba, and the Mizzou International Composers Festival, among others. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Linea, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Intercontemporain, EXAUDI, JACK Quartet, Duo Cortona, and Third Sound. In addition to concert music, his practice intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in the pieces IMY/ILY (2018-19) for solo percussionist, commissioned by Andy Meyerson (The Living Earth Show); The trauma you keep safe is the pain your pass along (2018) for flutist, performer, and video; and the installation/performance Communication (2013), at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria. Recent and projects included new pieces for the Eco Ensemble, commissioned by Cal Performances, the University of California, Berkeley Symphony, and the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble.
He was recently commissioned by the woodwind quintet Splinter Reeds to compose a new multimedia work for fall 2020. Amadeus holds degrees in Music from the University of California, San Diego (B.A. 2006) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2016). He currently serves as the Artistic Production Director for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and lectures at UC Berkeley. He will be a Guest Composer at the 2020 Composers Conference during Week 2.
Pronouns: he/him/his
2020 Guest composer
“In recent work, I have explored what I call the “erotics” of sound production, or how a body, as a physical form and as a container for personal experience, is a nexus for a multiplicity of possible meanings. My current practice stems from the belief that each body is physically unique and comes with its own manifold history which can and should expressed in the music. I see the work of music as finding and cultivating lyricism while foregrounding the [physical] struggle that creates it. Inspired and educated by the musical modernism of the 20th century, I wishe to expand the genre’s potential as an expressive tool for composers beyond its origins. In instrumental pieces like RAW and Eternity Will Be Velocity, dynamic and tempo extremes are employed to explore “energy,” “endurance,” and “momentum.” The musicians’ athleticism is emphasized, exploring the ways in which musicians’ bodies – through our personal identities and our performance practices – always bear the effects of punishing discipline in order to achieve a measure of expressive beauty. In other pieces like IMY/ILY and The trauma you keep safe…, the subconscious is pushed to the surface through demanding and often violent musical and physical gestures. In the latter, I use vocabulary borrowed from streams of movement and visual art. My work is often developed in close collaborations with performers which engender conversations about consent and trust, complicity and gaze, and power dynamics in performance.”