Composers

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Details as performer
 Daniel Moreira was born in Porto in 1983. He holds a PhD in Music Composition (King’s College, University of London, 2017), which was supported through a scholarship by Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia; a M. A. in Music Theory and Composition (Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo, Instituto Politécnico do Porto, 2010); and a B. A. in Economics (Faculdade de Economia, Universidade do Porto, 2006).

His main teachers include Sir George Benjamin, Fernando C. Lapa, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and João-Heitor Rigaud (Composition); Carlos Guedes (Electronic Music); and Miguel Ribeiro-Pereira, José Oliveira Martins and Silvina Milstein (Music Theory and Analysis). He also participated in a number of seminars and/ or had occasional one-to-one classes with Helmut Lachenmann, Klaas de Vries, Magnus Lindberg, Jonathan Harvey and Kaija Saariaho; and his music has been read in workshops with the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, Diotima Quartet, Lontano Ensemble and the Gulbenkian Orchestra. In 2015, he was one of the few composers selected to integrate the “LSO Panufnik Composers Scheme”, a one-year BIGINT set of workshops with the London Symphony Orchestra, which culminated with the public presentation of a new orchestral piece in 2016.

In 2009, he was awarded a Young-Composer-in-Residence at Casa da Música. Since then, he has regularly been commissioned to compose new music by institutions such as Casa da Música, Festival Musica Strasbourg, European Concert Hall Organisation-ECHO, Chester & Novello, Antena 2/ RDP, MPMP Património Musical Vivo, the “Criatório” Program and Kölner Philarmonie, among others. His music has been performed both in Portugal and abroad. Worth of particular mention, in this regard, is the participation in three new music festivals with works written for the resident ensembles of Casa da Música (Witten, 2009; Strasbourg, 2010; Strasbourg, 2012); and the premiere of the choral work Poema para a padeira at three European concert halls (Cité de la Musique, Paris; Sage Gateshead, UK; Gulbenkian Foundation, Lisbon), in the context of ECHO's “Rising Stars” programme (in 2014).

His music embraces multiple genres – from orchestral to chamber music – with a special emphasis, more recently, on choral music (Poema para a padeira, 2013; Do Desconcerto do mundo, 2016); opera (Cai uma Rosa..., 2015; Ninguém & Todo-o-Mundo: ópera lírico-turística em torno de Gil Vicente, 2018); and music for large ensemble and orchestra (Beethoven quasi una fantasia op. 27 n.º 2, for large ensemble, 2018; Isto não é um filme, concerto for orchestra and electronics, 2020). Works in progress include the composition of the opening music for the Portuguese Pavilion in Dubai's EXPO 2020 (As ondas que a maré conta, ninguém as pode contar, for electronics); the composition of music for silent movies (with piano and electronics); and a new work for amplified vocal octet (Quadras Pessoanas).

As a music theorist and analyst, he is mainly devoted to the analysis of film music (with a special focus in Bernard Herrmann's music) and to the study of the idea of musicality in cinema (with a special focus on David Lynch's films); he also approaches matters of harmony and temporality in music of the 20th and 21st centuries of both the erudite and popular traditions. His main published articles include: Nondirected Linearity and Modulatory Networks in Webern’s op. 10/4 (Revista Portuguesa de Musicologia, 2016); The Spiral of Time: the Crystal-Image in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Vertigo (Music Analysis, 2021); Chaos, Madness and Distorted Mirrors in Herrmann’s Music for Hitchcock’s Psycho (Journal of Film Music; the article has been accepted for publication and is currently under revision).

Since 2009, he has been teaching classes of Analysis, Aesthetics and Composition at ESMAE-IPP, where he is, since 2020, the coordinator of the Theory area. He also taught at the University of Minho (2017-19), and, as a visiting teacher, at the Xiquitsi Project in Maputo, Mozambique (2015-17). Since 2020, he is an integrated researcher at University of Coimbra's Centro de Estudos Interdisciplinares – CEIS20 –, where he is, since 2021, one of the coordinators of the research group “Art Currents and Intelectual Movements”. He is also, since 2021, a member of the Fiscal Council of the Sociedade Portuguesa de Investigação em Música. Finally, he collaborates often with Casa da Música and other Portuguese institutions writing programme notes for concerts and CDs, and presenting free courses and pre-concert talks to non-specialized audiences.

Last update: August 16th, 2021