Alejandro Viñao

Who is Alejandro Viñao?

Alejandro Viñao is an Argentinian composer currently living in the United Kingdom.

Viñao studied musical composition in Buenos Aires with the composer Jacobo Ficher. In 1976 he was awarded a British Council scholarship to study in London at the Royal College of Music and later on at the City University where he was awarded a Ph.D in composition. He has been a British citizen since 1994, holding double nationality. During the 1980s he worked at IRCAM in Paris where he developed a particular interest in sound interpolation a technique that has featured in many of his compositions such as Chant D'Ailleurs which won the Prix Ars Electronica in 1992. Viñao has written orchestral and chamber music for the concert hall, opera and music-theatre, film scores, music for multimedia events and rock and popular music. He has also created and presented programmes for the BBC, radio 3. He has written a number of percussion works, such as Khan Variations, which have become very well known in the US, Europe and Japan. At the rhythmic level Viñao’s work has been influenced by non western musical traditions as well as by the music of Conlon Nancarrow. In percussion pieces such as Estudios de Fronteras, Viñao used complex polyrhythms to realise with percussion instruments played by human performers ideas derived from Nancarrow’s etudes for pianola. He also explored complex ideas on multi temporality using acoustic instruments combined with electroacoustic means, most noticeably in his string quartet Phrase & Fiction. Viñao presented his views on Nancarrow and his influence on a generation of composer such as himself in a BBC radio programme entitled ‘Children of Nancarrow’.