Alejandro Viñao

Raul Alejandro Viñao (born 4 September 1951) is an Argentine composer based in London. Early life Viñao studied musical composition in Buenos Aires with the composer Jacobo Ficher. In 1976 he was awarded a British Council scholarship to study in London at the Royal College of Music and later on at the City University where he was awarded a PhD in composition. Career In the 1980s, Viñao worked at IRCAM in Paris where he developed a particular interest in sound interpolation (sound morphing) a technique that has featured in many of his compositions such as Chant D’Ailleurs which won the Prix Ars Electronica in 1992. Viñao has written orchestral and chamber music for the concert hall, opera and music-theatre, film scores, music for multimedia events and rock and popular music. He has also created and presented programmes for BBC Radio 3. He has written a number of percussion works, such as Khan Variations for solo Marimba, which have become very well known in the US, Europe and Japan. At the rhythmic level Viñao’s work has been influenced by non-western musical traditions as well as by the music of Conlon Nancarrow. In percussion pieces such as Estudios de Fronteras (2004), Viñao used