Luís Bittencourt

Luís Bittencourt is a musician, composer, artist-researcher and music producer. An active performer in a range of various instruments and styles — from classical, folk south american music, free improvisation to contemporary experimental music — Bittencourt is considered “a master of sound experimentation” (Vision Magazine, Portugal) and has performed solo in Europe, Oceania, north and south America. His performances, which are “a torrent of originality” (Casa da Música, Portugal), include first auditions of his own compositions, and by composers Tan Dun, Gabriel Prokofiev, Steve Reich, Vinko Globokar and some contemporary Portuguese composers.

“The plurality of sounds and instruments presented by Luís Bittencourt elevates his artistry to the alchemical degree. His body movements are varnished by the playing of lights, turning him into an instantaneous shaman, a kind of high priest of sound.” (Grings Memorabilia, Brazil)

Bittencourt has also been featured in many contemporary art/music festivals and concert venues like IKLECTIK, Sound Res, Lisboa Soa, Casa da Música, Sonoscopia, The Cockpit, Convento de São Francisco, Theatro Circo, Serralves em Festa!, GNRation, Ciclo Do Audible, Arquipélago Centro de Artes Contemporâneas, Solilóquios, Museu de Lisboa, among other. He performed and collaborated with Lee Ranaldo and Leah Singer (Sonic Youth), Jeffrey Ziegler (Kronos Quartet), Phill Niblock, Kuniko Kato, Ney Rosauro, Helga Davis, Katherine Liberovskaya, David Sheppard, Paola Prestini, Found Sound Nation, Ali Hossaini, Gabriel Prokofiev (Non Classical), David Cossin (Bang on a Can), Jon Rose, Rafael Toral, Miquel Bernat & Drumming GP, Mina Tindle, Emily Hall, among others. As composer and music producer he obtained 1st prize in the contest “Legends of China - Confucius Arts Institute Award 2016” and has already collaborated with artists and institutions, such as Cecile Elton, Lange Studios, Instagram® and Cannes Lions.

As an artist-researcher, his interests include percussion, sound, musical performance and performance studies, practice-based research, embodied knowledge, contemporary music, philosophy of music, interdisciplinary collaboration, sound art, extended techniques, unusual instruments and sound sources, instrumentality, improvisation, experimental music and experimental artistic practices. Bittencourt is author of two pioneer studies, namely Percussion and instrumentality: exploring the performance of unusual instruments and sound sources, a doctoral artistic research, and The use of water as a percussive sound source: analysis of Tan Dun’s Water Music, a master study on the possibilities of water as musical instrument. His investigations have established new insights on experimentation in percussion music and on the instrumentality of found instruments and have been published and presented at many institutions and events around the world, such as the Conservatoire Supèrieur de Musique et Dance de Lyon (FR), Leeds College of Music (UK), Conservatório de Valencia (ES), Guildhall School of Music and Drama (UK), Universidade Federal de Santa Maria (BR), International Summer Course for New Music Darmstadt (DE), Bath Spa University (UK), Queensland Conservatoire/Griffiths University (AU). Bittencourt holds a PhD in Music Performance and a Master in Music Performance from University of Aveiro, Portugal, and a Bachelor Degree in Percussion Performance (Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil). He is also hired researcher in the project “Xperimus: experimentation in music in Portuguese culture: history, contexts and practices in the 20th and 21st centuries” and integrated researcher at the Institute of Ethnomusicology - Centre of Studies in Music and Dance (INET-md).

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