People

Ian Cross is responsible for teaching all aspects of science and music in the Faculty at Cambridge (where he is Director of the Faculty's new Centre for Music & Science), and for all teaching and research involving the Faculty's computing and electroacoustic facilities. Some of the undergraduate coursework projects arising from a final-year course introducing students to the experimental study of musical behaviours can be accessed at the Perception and Performance page; details of graduate students working under his supervision can be found at the Science & Music group home page, along with details of other members of the group. He is involved in experimental investigations of the perception of tonal structures and of the role of culture in shaping musical cognition, and is also actively interested in exploring the general limits and constraints on scientific accounts of music. Current interests also include exploration of the relation between music and cognitive evolution (see the Lithoacoustics page).

He is a member of the Committee of the Society for Education, Music and Psychology Research (SEMPRE), and from 1992 until 2000 was on the Executive Committee of the European Society for the Cognitive Sciences of Music (ESCOM). He is on the editorial boards of Psychology of Music and Music Perception and from 1997 until 2000 was the Associate Editor (English language) of ESCOM's journal Musicae Scientiae .

He supports Partick Thistle , is a guitarist , having studied in Scotland with Norman Quinney and Ron Moore and in London with Tim Walker (and suggests that any interested guitarists check out the site of new Cambridge maker Martin Woodhouse), and is the only member of the Music Faculty at Cambridge (as far as he is aware) to have rejected an offer to join the Bay City Rollers .

«CMS - Univ. Cambridge - Ian Cross - Biography
publisher:Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge»
© 2004 University of Cambridge All rights reserved.
(http://www.mus.cam.ac.uk/~ic108/crossbio96.html)

Born 4/9/1951, Buenos Aires, Argentina. British citizen since 1994.

Alejandro Vinao studied composition with the Russian composer Jacobo Ficher in Buenos Aires. In 1975 he moved to Britain where he continued his studies at the Royal College of Music and the City University in London. He has been resident in Britain since then. In 1988 he was awarded a PhD. D. in composition at the City University.

Vinao has received a number of international prizes and awards including the 'Golden Nica' Prix Ars Electronica (1992), 1st Prize at The International Rostrum at the Unesco World Music Council (1984) and many others.

Vinao's music has been played and broadcast throughout Europe and the U.S.A and has been featured in international festivals such as the Tanglewood Festival, the Warsaw Autumn Festival and the London PROMS.

He has received commissions from various performing groups and institutions around the world such as I.R.C.A.M, in France, MIT in the USA, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Kronos quartet.

During the 80's Vinao worked at Ircam at regular intervals and 1987 he was composer in residence at M.I.T. in the U.S.A.

In 1994 Alejandro Vinao was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in composition. His piece Apocryphal Dances was premiered by the BBC Symphony Orchestra in London in 1997. The same year Vinao was invited to Japan to present his music in a Portrait Concert. Later that year, his chamber opera Rashomon was premiered in Germany. This work was commissioned by ZKM for the opening of their new building in Karlsruhe. Since then Rashomon has been produced in Paris, London and Gothenburg.

Following the success of his choral work Epitafios, Vinao was commissioned a new piece 'La Trama' for mixed choir and computer by the German Sudwestrundfunk. This latest work was premiered in February 2003 by the SWR Vokalensemble Stuttgart.

Alejandro Vinao's music is characterised by the use of pulsed rhythmic structures to create large scale form, and by a melodic writing which -as in the case of much non-European music- develops through rhythm rather than harmony.

In addition to instrumental and Electroacoustic compositions he has also been involved with the creation of multimedia works, has composed music for some 20 films and produced several radio programmes for the BBC.

Currently Vinao is a Research Fellow at the Music Faculty of Cambridge University.

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© 2004 Alejandro Vi紡o All rights reserved.
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