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Details as composer
Christopher Bochmann was born in England in 1950. for nine years he lived in Turkey, where he began to study ‘cello with his father. On returning to England, he joined the Choir of St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle. He graduated from the University of Oxford, and studied subsequently with Nadia Boulanger in Paris and Richard Rodney Bennett in London, as well as attending seminars with Harrison Birtwistle and Peter Maxwell Davies. Bochmann’s career led him to teach in various schools, both in Brazil and in Portugal, where he moved definitively in 1980. He was Director of the Escola Superior de Música of Lisbon from 1995 to 2001, and continues to teach there. As far as his pedagogical works is concerned, he has been very active in the teaching of music in Portugal. His activity has included the publication of several studies and resource manuals for composition courses, as well as the transcription and editing of works receiving their modern premières. Christopher Bochmann is Titular Conductor of the Symphonic Youth Orchestra, whose artistic director he has been since 1984. “(…) Until about 1982, or 1983, my music tended towards a quite considerable complexity, notably rhythmic, but not only- a complexity in many senses. I worked a great deal with aleatpric forms, with open forms… later, for various reasons, from 1982, 1983, onwards, I began to work on pieces which are virtually controlled improvisations. A kind of aleatoricism, therefore. During the rest of the decade (…), I composed various works which seek to join these two aspects – the complexity (…) with another music, very free (…). And then, somewhere around 1991, I began to feel that it had become very difficult to discover these two sides – they are so integrated that one can say that the pieces have a single technique.” Christopher Bochmann (July 2003)