Born in Angola in 1963. He studied chemical engineering at the Higher Technical Institute between 1980 and 1983. He became interested in the use of computers in musical composition, and joined the course of sonology at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in 1986, where he worked with digital synthesis, programming interactive musical systems, psycho-acoustics, signal processing and analogue studio techniques. Several of his works have been written using electronics in real time at STEM, in Amsterdam, The Hague, and at the Royal Academy of Art of Bosch.
On his return to Portugal, he was invited in 1988 to join the Bioacoustic group at the Centre of Analysis and Signal Processing of the Interdisciplinary Complex at the Higher Technical Institute. He carried out a number of environmental studies related to noise. He also took part in innumerable conferences, having spoken at many of them in Portugal.
In 1998 António Ferreira returned to composing in his own studio using computers. He produced two CDs of original compositions, and had works performed in Portugal (Música Viva Festival, Festival of Aveiro) and abroad (Italy, France, Denmark, Norway, Cuba, Hungary, Poland, United States of America, Sweden, Korea, Singapore, United Kingdom and Brazil).
"I don't know when I became a composer. The process arose, I don't say naturally, but as part of my life. (...) For some time, my technical capacity was generally greater than my compositional capacity. I took some time to work this capacity up to the level of my technical skill. I think now they're balanced."
António Ferreira (June 2003)
António Ferreira
composer
