A native of the city of Rio de Janeiro, Guilherme Carneiro da Cunha Bauer, composer and professor, is one of the major composers of the vanguard generation born in the 1940s and 50s. Educated exclusively in Brazil, he studied violin with Iolanda Peixoto and Oscar Borgerth. He has participated in chamber ensembles and the National Symphonic Orchestra of Rádio MEC (Ministry of Education and Culture radio station). In 1977, he organized the Ars Contemporânea ensemble which, for seven years, presented innumerous concerts for the purpose of divulging, principally, a predominately Brazilian repertoire.  As a composer, he studied counterpoint and composition with Cláudio Santoro, musical analysis with Esther Scliar, and harmony, counterpoint, fugue, composition, and orchestration with Guerra-Peixe, with whom he forged a solid and enriching friendship.
He taught composition and orchestration at the Estácio de Sá University in Rio de Janeiro from 1986 to 1999, and, since 1983, he has taught harmony, counterpoint, fugue, orchestration, and composition at the Villa-Lobos School of Music in Rio de Janeiro.
He was responsible for two important projects for the diffusion of Brazilian music: the recording of more than fifty compositions by Brazilian composers for the Municipal Government of the City of Rio de Janeiro’s RioArte Digital label; and the Estréias Brasileiras (Brazilian Premieres) Project, sponsored by the CCBB (Bank of Brazil Cultural Center), which commissioned and premiered thirty-three works by Brazilian composers in 1997.
In 1996, he delivered lectures on Brazilian music in the United States at the University of Florida, the University of Miami, and the University of Houston. In 1999, at the Bruckner Conservatory in Linz, Austria, he took part in a public rehearsal of his piece Reflexos, which had been commissioned and was premiered by the George Crumb Trio.
At the beginning of his career, he adhered to the aesthetics of atonalism. He later adopted a free language often based on popular musical traditions. He has won more than a total of eight composition competitions, of special note being the ESSO Classical Music Award, the UFBa (Federal University of Bahia) Latin American Competition, and the Artistic Culture Society of São Paulo Award. In 1998, he received the APCA (Paulista Association of Art Critics) Award for his String Quartet No. 2.
The CD Partita Brasileira, boasting the RioArte Digital label and launched in October, 2002, and his election into the Brazilian Academy of Music constitute part of his production realized between 1981 and 2001.
During the XVI Biennial of Contemporary Brazilian Music in November, 2005, his Cadências for Piano and Orchestra, a piece written with a Vitae Arts Grant, was performed in public for the first time.
Web: http://www.abmusica.org.br/site_abm_ingles/index.html (2010)