Vieira, José Carlos do Amaral (1952–)

José Carlos do Amaral Vieira (b. 2 March 1952), Brazilian composer and pianist. Amaral Vieira was better known as a pianist until 1984, when an Amaral Vieira Festival featuring an amazing diversity of musical works by the young composer was held in São Paulo. The festival included fourteen concerts during which 157 works by Vieira were performed. When Vieira later announced his intention to record the complete piano works and transcriptions of Franz Liszt, a project that would require seventy compact discs to complete, and it became obvious that no commercial company would undertake this vast project, Vieira established Scorpio, his own recording label. New musical works and vast projects appear to blossom forth from his fertile mind and nimble fingers with incredible rapidity. In a nation in which Heitor Villa-Lobos established a tradition of explosive creativity with more than one thousand musical works, Vieira is attempting to surpass his predecessors. Vieira's compositional style in works such as Elegy, Nocturne and Toccata (for piano [1980]), and Variações Fausto (a set of variations in fantasia form on a theme of Franz Liszt's Faust Symphony [1985]) shows his ability to write brilliantly for the piano and his intense involvement with the compositional style of Franz Liszt. From 1993 to 1995 and from 1998 to 2002 he was president of the Brazilian Contemporary Music Society. In 2000, he became a member of the Brazilian Academy of Music. In 2001, he became president of the Drama and Music Conservatory Foundation of São Paulo.

See alsoMusic: Art Music .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Additional Bibliography

Chase, Robert. A Guide to Contemporary Memorial Music. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2007.

Sher, Chuck, ed. The Latin Real Book: The Best Contemporary and Classic Salsa, Brazilian Music, Latin Jazz. Petaluma, CA: Sher Music Co., 1997.

                                       David P. Appleby