My Instruments
The multi-instrument structure Geralda was created in 2000 with the help of technologist Alexandre Boratto. However it’s prototype version was built in 1994, as an accompaniment to Taborda’s composition “Songs of Moss and Dust”. The instrument’s aluminum structure, with a circle in the base, a rectangle at waist height and a pentagon on the top, houses approximately 70 acoustic and electroacoustic sound sources, arranged throughout the instrument, in a way that they could be accessed
by different parts of the body. Initially built to be played solo, since 2005 Geralda had an extended version with the help of composer Alexandre Fenerich, connecting Geralda via midi and audio to an external computer loaded with samples of Geralda’s sounds. Those connections, that allow to both Fenerich and Taborda to interfere in each other’s devices, aim to dissolve any attempt of individual control over the performance’s outcome.
Gallery
-
-
©Mauro Kury -
©Mauro Kury -
©Mauro Kury -
©Mauro Kury -
©Mauro Kury
Biography
Tato Taborda (born Curitiba, 1960), is a Brazilian composer, pianist and teacher. After his studies with Hans Joachim Koellreutter, Esther Scliar and R. Murray Schafer, he took classes with Helmut Lachenmann, Gordon Mumma and Dieter Schnebel at the Cursos Latinoamericanos de Música Contemporânea (Latin American Workshops for New Music) between 1978 and 1989. From 1983, he, has intensively collaborated with the contemporary theatre and dance scene in Brazil. As composer, has works commissioned by Donaueschinger Musiktage, Berliner Festspiele, Pro-Musica Nova Bremem, Festival of Perth, International São Paulo's Bienal, and Münchenner Biennale. His doctoral thesis “Biocontraponto: how we learned counterpoint from
frogs”, completed in 2004 at the University of Rio de Janeiro (Unirio), compared the communication strategies of nocturnal animals with the techniques of counterpoint and polyphony. Taborda's first opera, A Queda do Céu (German title: Der Einsturz des Himmels; English title: The Fall of the Sky) was given its world premiere as part of the Amazonas trilogy at the 2010 Munich Biennale, followed by performances in São Paulo, Rotterdam and Vienna. He is currently a professor of the Arts Course at the Universidade Federal Fluminense and the Postgraduate Program in Contemporary Arts Studies - PPGCA at UFF. In 2021, he launched the book Resonances: Vibrations by Sympathy and Frequencies of Insurgency by Editora UFRJ.