Brian Joseph Questa (b. 1988, New York City) is an Irish-American composer, media artist, and multi-instrumentalist who works in sound, video, text, installation, and performance. This versatility reflects his upbringing in the pluralistic music world of New York City, where he gained his musical education and spent 10 years as a double-bassist and performing artist, before moving to Germany in 2016 to study composition with composer, Wolfgang Rihm. He received his M.Mus. from the State University of Music in Stuttgart (HMdK) and a MA in Computer Music from the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics, University of Arts (KUG), in Graz, Austria.

 

     His artistic practice explores the influence of genre and aesthetic language on composition through the use of quotation, sampling, and the re-processing of musical and non-musical data. For example, Under Pressure, both a video game and an interactive score, investigates how interactive appropriation can be both a form of music making and musicological criticism, re-interprating Lachenmann's corporeality of the cello as a corporeality of the score in a disembodied digital world. Cathedral, for cello and electronics, also blurs the lines between sounds of the body and sounds of the cello.  His solo piano works, Für Wolfgang Rihm, and Bach Inventions in Reverse without E, explore the conceptual, often algorithmic, transformations of works by Bach and Beethoven, and how a simple process, such as removing a single note, can be an effective deconstructive element to an entire composition. Through his quotations and disambiguations of classical works, he positions the role of the composer as already a copy of figures such as Bach or Beethoven. Take Me Out to the Ballgame, composed for the Riot Ensemble, juxtaposes kitchy American baseball music with extended instrumental techniques, posing the question: where is the real kitsch, the contemporary techniques or the traditional melodies? 

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     His chamber compositions span multiple genres and styles, including a work for vocal ensemble, Ritual for Summer Solstice, premiered by the Melos Collective and the Lithuanian Composers Union, Constructing Lines, for electronic music and two guitars, premiered at the Seoul International Computer Music Festival, and Zwölf für Zwölf, for chamber ensemble, premiered by the Badische Staatskapelle. He has also produced various collections which include electronic music, jazz, noise, and  music for dance and film. He has had several installation works featured at the International Computer Music Conference (ICMC 2018), The International Symposium on Electronic Arts (ISEA 2019), and the Center for Digital Culture in Mexico City. His installation work was twice awarded the Special Jury Mention at the Japan Media Arts Festival. 

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     In 2021, he was a resident at the Electronic Music Studios of the Academy of Arts (AdK) in Berlin. 

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Venues: 

Asia Culture Center, Gwanju, South Korea;

Centro de Cultura Digital, Mexico City, Mexico; 

Zentrum für Kunst und Neue Medien, Karlsruhe, Germany; 

MUMUTH Graz, Austria;  

Sala Luis Miró Quesada Garland, Lima, Peru; 

Panoply Performance Laboratory, Brooklyn, New York; 

Liebig 12, Berlin, Germany; 

QuietCue, Berlin Germany. 

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Festivals: 

Kintai Music Festival; 

Darmstadt Ferienkurse für Neue Musik; 

Resonant Bodies Festival; 

Japan Media Arts Festival; 

International Symposium on Electronic Arts; 

International Conference of Computer Music;

Seoul International Festival of Computer Music; 

Tonraum Festival; 

Next Generation Festival; 

Avant Media Festival.

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Education:

Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and Art in New York City (2006);

Bachelor in Double Bass from the Manhattan School of Music (2010);

Master in Composition from the HMdK Stuttgart (2018), 

Master´s Candidate at the Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics at the Kunstuniversität Graz (current). 

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Writings:

Free Jazz Collective;

International Computer Music Journal ARRAY;

Institute for Electronic Music and Acoustics Blog at the IEM Graz. 

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Composition Teachers: 

Wolfgang Rihm (2015 - 2017); 

Marco Stroppa (2017 - 2018);

Marko Ciciliani (2018 - ). 

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