Daniel Blanco Albert

United Kingdom (residence), Spain (citizenship) °1993
research interests: opera, composition, music theater, art and science, interdisciplinary collaboration, engagement, circular economy
affiliation: Birmingham City University
en

Daniel Blanco Albert is a Birmingham-based composer and conductor.

 

He is Infinite Opera’s co-artistic director and resident composer, for which he has written works such as the physics dissemination opera “Entanglement! An Entropic Tale”, the operatic beer trilogy “Besse” (designed to be performed in breweries!), or his most recent opera for planetariums “The Flowering Desert”, created in collaboration with the Astrophysics department at the University of Birmingham. He has also collaborated as an assistant at Òpera de Butxaca i Nova Creació (ÒBNC) in Barcelona.

 

Some of his stage works have been inspired and informed by folk customs, especially masquerading. His work “La Obisparra”, based on the devilish custom of “Los Carochos de Riofrío” was performed at the Zamora Opera Festival in 2022 (Spain), bringing participatory opera to isolated villages in the region. The folk protest masquerade “Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing”, based on the Kentish custom of hoodening and created between Infinite Opera and PostWorkersTheatre was featured during several months at the 2022 Luleå Arts and Crafts Biennial (Sweden).

 

Daniel has also worked composing music for theatrical productions and artistic installations in several countries, collaborating with directors such as Aleksandar Dundjerovic, Stephen Simms or Lise Olson, or companies such as Os Satyros (Brazil). As a composer he is also an active collaborator in engagement projects in the Midlands, having worked for several years for the Welsh National Opera’s, and most recently with Turtle Key Arts and English Touring Opera, co-creating an opera with young people in the autism spectrum.

 

Daniel studied Composition in Spain and in the UK, getting the Extraordinary Prize at Valencia Conservatoire and a BMus (First) and Masters (Distinction) at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (funded with a Leverhulme Arts Scholarship). He is currently pursuing a PhD in Performing Arts at Birmingham City University as part of the AHRC funded Midlands4Cities Doctoral Programme.

research

research expositions

  • Composition strategies for the creation of science-based interdisciplinary and collaborative music-theatre (2024) author(s): Daniel Blanco Albert published in: Birmingham City University: Faculty of Arts, Design and Media
    The practice-based PhD research project comprises the development and application of composition strategies and techniques generated through interdisciplinary collaboration to integrate elements and ideas from non-sonic disciplines into the musical discourse of new music-theatre works, specifically opera. I explore mechanisms of mapping and association that engage with both the specific subject matter of each piece and the creative collaborative environment in which they are created, thus generating different compositional resources that I use to inform the creative process. By using mapping techniques, I can deeply engage and communicate a subject matter on different levels in the musical composition. The framework for this research is the intertwining of art and science on a variety of levels from a music compositional perspective. Within this framework, I explored the integration of knowledge and data from the natural and social sciences to inform the composition of four science-based music-theatre works: In response to Naum Gabo: Linear Construction in Space No. 1 (2020), Autohoodening: The Rise of Captain Swing (2021), The Flowering Desert (2022), and TRAPPIST-1 (2023). With this approach, I aim to closely link these works with their particular subject matter instead of being composed based just on my personal musical taste. By consistently and cohesively applying the strategies and techniques explored in this research, the outcome is not creating music about science or music inspired by science, but, instead, music embedded with science in which the scientific data and knowledge inform the composition decisions. The subject matter is therefore intertwined within the musical discourse, its performativity and theatricality, and its relationship with the other disciplines and collaborators involved in the creation of these music-theatre works.
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