Aliéksey Barreto Malheiros Vianna is a PhD candidate at the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts.

More information about Aliéksey Barreto Malheiros Vianna

You can reach Aliéksey Vianna at alieksey@aliekseyvianna.com or +41-78-924-0911

Research

Throughout history, the classical guitar has been widely explored as a vehicle for solo performances. Its centuries-long tradition of solo music, including the repertoire of early plucked-string instruments, has probably no parallel in any instrument other than those of the keyboard family. However, surprisingly different from the keyboard instruments, the guitar is not nearly as commonly used within unaccompanied improvised-music contexts.

It appears to me that the reason for this has to do with the fact that improvising guitarists almost always approach the instrument mono-phonically or homo-rhythmically (i.e., they limit themselves to play either single lines or blocked chords). With such limited textural variety, generating enough interesting material for whole solo performances or recordings becomes a great challenge.

Considering the rich multi-textural nature of the classical guitar repertoire as a whole and this mono-phonic/homo-rhythmic nature of the immense majority of improvised guitar music, two main questions arise:

- What are the specific reasons why there is such a textural gap between the music that most people improvise and that which one can practice and learn to play (as in the completely written-out repertoire) in the case of the classical guitar?

- How can one practice and develop the ability to improvise multi-texturally on the unaccompanied classical guitar?

My principal goal with this research is the development of my own ability to improvise without an accompanist through the application of a methodology aimed specifically at the practice of this kind of improvisation. The idea is to focus on the textural aspects of solo-guitar music and approach the subject specifically from the point of view of the instrumentalist, considering the instrument's mechanical capabilities/limitations as well as the history of its solo repertoire.

Curriculum vitae

First place winner in thirteen international classical guitar competitions, Brazilian Aliéksey Vianna has been featured in prestigious venues of over thirty countries thoughout the world. Some recent engagements include New York’s Carnegie Hall, Basel’s Stadtcasino, Canberra’s Wesley Music Center, Cairo’s Opera House, Mexico City’s Nezahualcoyotl and Sao Paulo’s Auditório Ibirapuera. Aliéksey has appeared as a soloist with orchestras such as the Sinfonieorchester Basel (Switzerland), Turku Philharmonic (Finland), Filarmonia das Beiras (Portugal), Orquesta Ciudad de Almeria (Spain), the Aukso Tychy Chamber Orchestra (Poland) and the Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais (Brazil). He has also performed in chamber settings with musicians as diverse as Paul McCandless, Artaria Quartet, Peter Erskine, Mike Eckroth, Dimos Goudaroulis, Tracy Silverman, Antonio Carlos Carrasqueira, Felix Renggli, Stephan Kurmann and Pierre Boulez. His discography reflects his versatility. Ranging from jazz and Brazilian music to contemporary classical works, it includes premiere recordings of pieces by composers such as Egberto Gismonti, Ralph Towner, Sergio Assad, Eduardo Angulo and others. In 2015, he released his fourth record as a soloist, Aliéksey Vianna Trio In Concert at the bird’s eye, for the Swiss company TCB – The Montreaux Jazz Label. 

PhD supervisors

• Frans de Ruiter - Promotor
• Marcel Cobussen - Academic Specialist
• Dusan Bogdanovic - Artistic Specialist 

Grants and awards

Doctoral Studies Scolarship from the CAPES Foundation of Brazil's Ministry of Education