(b. 31 August 1953, Salvador, Bahia).
German composer, born in Brazil and now resident in the USA, of mostly stage, chamber, choral, electroacoustic, and multimedia works that have been performed throughout the Americas and Europe.
Mr. Chagas initially studied at the Universidade de São Paulo from 1973–79 and later studied with Henri Pousseur at the Conservatoire royal de musique in Liège from 1980–82. He then studied electronic music at the Hochschule für Musik und Tanz in Cologne from 1982–89. He earned his PhD at the Université de Liège in 2003.
Among his honours are a prize in a national competition in Rio de Janeiro (1977, for Webern: de tempos em tempos), the prize for l'Opéra Autrement from the Centre Acanthes (1989, for Oddort) and selection to the IAMIC Annual List (2001, for Bonfim). He has received commissions from the festival Ars Musica in Brussels, the Bonner Entwicklungswerkstatt für Computermedien, the Deutsches Nationaltheater und Staatskapelle Weimar, the festival Moscow Autumn, the festival MusikTriennale in Cologne, Oper Bonn, the Theaterhaus Stuttgart, WDR, and the Wittener Tage für Neue Kammermusik.
Mr. Chagas is also active in other positions. He worked as sound director of the studio for electronic music at WDR from 1990–99, where he conducted extensive research into algorithmic composition, computer music, electronic music, interactivity, multimedia, and sound spatialisation. There he also wrote music software and computer applications for analysis and composition. He has been a member of the board of directors of the Centre Henri Pousseur in Liège since 1998.
He taught as a visiting lecturer at the Université de Liège from 1991–93 and at the Conservatoire royal de musique in Liège in 1995–96. He has taught technology and music as Assistant Professor of Composition at the University of California, Riverside since 2004.
He has lived in the USA since 2004.
Web: http://composers21.com/compdocs/chagaspc.htm (2013)