Anthony Fiumara
Vision on teaching
Unlike other conservatories, Fontys MPA focuses on the music practice of today. As a student you get the opportunity to collaborate with students from other disciplines: from dance and theater to visual art forms.
In my composition lessons we will be working on developing your own sound and form – whether it is instrumental or electronic, classical or cross-over, pure concert music or a collaboration with other art forms.
Moreover, I want you as a student to experience how the concert practice works – as quickly as possible. Your music is gonig to be performed by MPA students and professionals during concerts – also outside the school walls, because that's where you learn the most.
Based on my own practice I want to teach you how you can become and remain relevant as a composer.
Biography
Anthony Fiumara (Tilburg 1968) received his musical training at the University of Utrecht. He works as a full time composer, but he also enjoyed a successful career as a music journalist, producer of radio programs and lecturer. Anthony was artistic director of Orkest De Volharding and Compagnie Bischoff. He co-founded the Amsterdam Electric Festival, as wel as the indie-classical ensemble Lunapark, and the independent record label Alaska Records.
He was composer–in-residence at the North Netherlands Symphony Orchestra and he wrote music for a number of international soloists and ensembles, such as musikFabrik, Trio Mediaeval, Quartetto Maurice, and Sentieri Selvaggi. Fiumara holds the position of professor of music composition at Music and Performance Arts in Tilburg.
Fiumara’s recent work is characterized by a dynamic style. Key words are speed, energy, layers, clear-cut contrasts. Witness the orchestral work As I Opened Fire (2014), the mercurial opening movement of the string quartet I Dreamed in the Cities at Night (2014) or the rushed ‘Interludes’ in Fiumara’s requiem, Memorial Park (2017), commissioned by November Music festival in Den Bosch, being the featured composer there in 2017.
An important (and also the most ear-catching) pillar is the repetitive nature of Fiumara’s work. He increasingly seems to use repetition as a means to set up a sound surface – Fiumara prefers to say ‘canvas’ – whereas the larger shape is buttressed by contrasts, collages, or maybe the blueprint of a rock song.
His music betrays a longing for immediacy, for powerful expression that has listeners by the short hairs straight away without them needing to take cognizance of the underlying constructions or deeper meanings. The essence of his work, in all its simpleness, can be taken at face value through the physical experience of the sound itself – or as Fiumara says ‘the skin or the sound’.
Fiumara is also a wanted orchestrator. He arranged the music of Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams, Simeon ten Holt, Brian Eno, Aphex Twin, Massive Attack and David Bowie.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHK78022H3IuHW0mcQ7xwqw
