Fábio Costa is a Brazilian-born conductor and composer.
Background
Fabio Ciglioni Martins Costa was born in São Paulo, Brazil, to an engineer and a psychologist, with family roots in Portugal and Italy and was partly raised in Germany. His grandfather :pt:Waldemar Ciglioni|Waldemar Ciglioni was a popular radiophonic actor, and great-grandfather Armando Ciglioni, a neapolitan-song composer/impresario and violinist at São Paulo Opera House. Costa started out musically self-taught at age 8 deciding by age 14 to become a professional musician; a year of horn studies was then followed by oboe studies at age 16 and 8 years of professional activity as an orchestral oboist, chamber musician and soloist. Costa won the 1995 Conducting Competition of the São Paulo Symphony and debuted subsequently as a conductor with that orchestra. After a year of oboe studies at the Franz Liszt Academy of Budapest , Costa went on to pursue a career as a conductor. Between 1996–1999 Costa studied at the Vienna Music Academy with a special scholarship of the Brazilian Government; he was also coached by Kurt Masur , Leonard Slatkin and Murry Sidlin and Gianluigi Gelmetti.
Conductor
Fabio Costa began his professional career with a schedule of about 25 symphonic concerts over the 1999/2000 season, and as Associate Conductor of the Spokane Symphony Orchestra and Director of Orchestras at Eastern Washington University – positions he held until 2003 – he conducted over 80 concerts, with a total audience estimated at about 70.000 people . Acting mainly as a guest conductor between 2004 and 2007, he appeared with the :pt:Orquestra Petrobras Sinfônica|Orquestra Petrobrás Sinfonica, São Paulo University Orchestra, Paraná State Orchestra , São Paulo City Youth Orchestra, São Paulo State Youth Orchestra, São PauloRadio Orchestra :pt:Amazonas Filarmônica|Orquestra Amazonas Filarmônica, Mendoza Symphony Orchestra. Between 2008 and 2009, Costa participated in establishing the :pt:Orquestra Filarmônica de Minas Gerais|Minas Gerais Philharmonic, a major Brazilian orchestra, as its Associate Conductor. In that position, he conducted over 60 concert performances that took place throughout federal state of Minas Gerais . This effort reached an audience of over 80.000 people, in over 30 locations statewide, mostly with cost-free access to the publicat large, including a relevant number of under-privileged communities in various state regions. Costa has conducted over 300 performances to an estimated audience of over 150,000 attendants. As concert and opera conductor, Costa took part in productions of Le Nozze Di Figaro; Zauberflöte "The Metamorphosis", ; Gianni Schicchi, La Gioconda, Othello, Werther, :it:Fosca |Fosca, Macbeth .
Composer
Among his compositional works, the choral work of humanistic and socio-environmental content "Psalms for the Earth" has been awarded the 2008 Composition Prize of the :pt:Academia Brasileira de Música|Brazilian Music Academy ; this work already explored higher by employing Just Intonation techniques. The work "Excerpt from Meditation" continued that path, exploring in 19-limit Just-Intonation. In 2010, Costa's orchestral Work "In Four Dimensions" was a winner of the Composition Prize of the Brazilian National Foundation for the Arts , within the :pt:Bienal de Música Brasileira Contemporânea|2011 Biennale of Brazilian Contemporary Music being performed by the :pt:Orquestra Sinfônica Nacional da Universidade Federal Fluminense|UFF National Symphony Orchestra. A continued exploration of Just-Intonation included experiments in such as "O Cravo Brigou com a Rosa" and a "commercial" soundtrack to "Potsdam in Time-Lapse" . The problems of enharmony within J.I. systems led Costa to an insight into the possibilities of 31 equal temperament, which allows for good approximation in higher . This resulted in a collaboration with the Huygens-Fokker Foundation within its Mikrofest 2015 at the Muziekgebow aan t'Ij in Amsterdam, with a performance of "Aphoristic Madrigals" for SATB soli and Fokker-Organ by the ensemble Vokalprojekt 31, especially formed at this occasion.
