Helena Palma
Helena Palma is both a composer and a linguist (Ph.D, UCM 1990). She is currently based in A Coruña, Spain, where she teaches and does research at the University of A Coruña. She was born in Barcelona and studied piano and harmony at the Conservatorio Superior de Musica with Josep Poch, Joan Pich Santasusana, Manel Oltra and Maria Lluisa Nadal. She extended her musical education in England, with Ronald Lees (piano), Raymond Warren (fugue). After, she studied contemporary composition techniques with Helmut Lachenmann, Salvatore Sciarrino, György Kurtag, Hans Zender, and electronic music with Trevord Whishart and Eduardo Reck Miranda. Her research interests in composition include the quantization of time, improvisatory games, polyrhythmic dialogues, imitative schemes, indexicals and egocentric perspective, spatialization of sound, interface between speech prosody, rhythm and melody. Her interests in Linguistics are focused in the fields of Linguistic Universals, Formal Semantics and Syntax. Some of her recent compositions are "Colorless green ideas" (choir 2010); "Quark" (choir 2010); Affricate consonants (choir 2010); "The forest" (vl, pf and electronics, 7’, 2009); "The Descent of Man" (vl, 2009); "The underwater Forest" (cl, vl, vc, 2008); "Scenarios for constructing the self" (pf, elect 2007).