The work of Amadeus Julian Regucera (b.1984) engages with the embodied and acoustical energy of sound and the erotics of its production. He has had the opportunity to present works around the world: notably, at the ManiFeste (Paris, FR), the Festival Musica (Strasbourg, FR), Voix Nouvelles (Asnières-sur-Oise, FR), the Resonant Bodies Festival and the SONiC Festival (New York City), the Havana Festival of Contemporary Music as part of the American Composers Forum artist delegation to Cuba, the Mizzou International Composers Festival, and the Hong Kong Modern Academy, among others. His music has been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Linea, Alarm Will Sound, Ensemble Intercontemporain, EXAUDI vocal ensemble, the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, Eco Ensemble, Duo Cortona, Third Sound, and the University of California, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. In addition to concert music, his practice intersects with visual and performance art, most notably in the pieces IMY/ILY (2018-19) – a monodrama for solo percussionist, commissioned by Andy Meyerson (The Living Earth Show); The trauma you keep safe is the pain your pass along (2018) for flutist, performer, and video; and the installation/performance Communication (2013), at the Kulturzentrum bei den Minoriten in Graz, Austria. Recent and upcoming projects included RAW for the Eco Ensemble, commissioned by Cal Performances (March 2019); Eternity Will Be Velocity for the University of California, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra (March/October 2019) which will be toured in central Europe in the Summer of 2020; and intra.sonant for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble (April 2019) which combined music with the practice of Feldenkrais. He was recently awarded an Inter-Music SF Grant to compose a new multimedia work for the woodwind quintet Splinter Reeds to be premiered in September 2020 in Santa Cruz, California. Future projects involve a new large-scale work commissioned by the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and a new work for vocalist Lucy Dhegrae. Amadeus holds degrees in Music from the University of California, San Diego (B.A. 2006) and the University of California, Berkeley (PhD, 2016) where he lectures in the Department of Music. He currently serves as the Artistic Production Director for the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players and UC Berkeley’s Eco Ensemble.

In recent work, Amadeus explores what he calls the “erotics” of sound production, or how a body, as a physical form and as a container for personal experience, is a nexus for a multiplicity of possible meanings. His current practice stems from the belief that each body is physically unique and comes with its own manifold history which can and should be expressed in the music. Amadeus sees the work of music as finding and cultivating lyricism while foregrounding the [physical] struggle that creates it. Inspired and educated by the musical modernism of the 20th century, Amadeus wishes to expand the genre’s potential as an expressive tool for composers beyond its origins. In instrumental pieces like RAW and Eternity Will Be Velocity, dynamic and tempo extremes are employed to explore energy, endurance, and momentum. The musicians’ athleticism is foregrounded, exploring the ways in which musicians’ bodies – through our personal identities and our performance practices – always bear the effects of punishing discipline in order to achieve a measure of expressive beauty. In other pieces like IMY/ILY and The trauma you keep safe…, the subconscious is pushed to the surface through demanding and often violent musical and physical gestures. In the latter, Amadeus uses vocabulary borrowed from streams of movement and visual art. His work is often developed in close collaborations with performers which engender conversations about consent and trust, complicity and gaze, and power dynamics in performance.

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