The Third Symposium on Computer Music in Brazil was held August 5-7, 1996 in Recife. The annual event has become an important regional gathering place, providing researchers, teachers, performers, and composers in Brazil to share their work with colleagues in other countries.
The symposium is the main event of the Brazilian Association for Research in Computer Music (NUCOM), a national organization of researchers, composers, and performers concerned with music technology. Aluizio Arcela demonstrated his work in sound, light, and geometry, implemented in Java. The symposium attracted Brazilians working abroad--Celso Aguiar (CCRMA) gave a talk on composition with spectral models and Mikhail Malt (IRCAM) reflected on the computer and the composer. There were paper sessions on algorithmic composition (Jonatas Manzolli, Fernando Iazzetta, Leucio Guerra), computer-aided music instruction (Elio Fritsch, Marcos de Moraes, Evandro de B. Costa), systems and languages (Anselmo Almeida, Rodolfo Caesar, Carlos Cerana), real time systems (Fernando Lopez-Lezcano, Marcelo Maes, Martin Fumarola), and signal processing and sound synthesis (Pablo Di Liscia, Jonatas Manzolli, Jose Fornari, Carlos Martins).
The symposium took place in the Department of Music of the Federal University of Pernambuco , just one of 13 special interest groups meeting simultaneously in conjunction with the Brazilian Computer Society's annual conference. The combined congress opened with a performance by the music department's Digital Orchestra, a chamber ensemble which includes synthesizers, providing an opportunity to invite people involved with the other groups to attend the computer music events.
Two evening concerts were presented with compositions by Francisco Giomi, Helcio Muller and Guto Caminhoto, Pete Stollery, Rajmil Fischman, Mario Verandi, Denis Smalley, Manuel Rocha Iturbide, Juan Carlos Pampin, Riccardo Dapelo, Anselmo Guerra de Almeida, Carlos Cerana, Emanuele Pappalardo, Aquiles Pantaleao, and Agostino Di Scipio. The composition committee decided to limit the number of concerts and pieces this year in order focus attention and to prevent audience fatigue. In addition to the main concerts, Mark Goldstein gave a demonstration of the new Buchla Lightning in a workshop and performance of Silvia Mateus' "Joan is Back", and Jonatas Manzolli and Robert Willey gave a concert of their works for computer-controlled piano, along with pieces by Conlon Nancarrow, Christopher Dobrian, Eric Lyon, Tom North, Gareth Loy, Rick Bidlack, Steve Key, Karlheinz Essl, and Igor Korneitchouk. These pieces via the web.
Some of the papers from the symposium have been posted.
A round table discussion took place concerning computer music education in Brazil. Two sessions were held to discuss NUCOM business, including the election of a board to organize the fourth symposium, which will be held in August, 1997 in Brasilia.