Hosting the Events

Gonçalo Cruz  (Portugal | Finland)

Gonçalo Cruz is a Musician, Researcher & Maker of Bagpipes & Woodwinds.
He holds a Bachelor and a Master degree in Architecture and is currently a Doctor of Music candidate at the Sibelius Academy – “Forgotten Bagpipes – The redesign of the Säkkipilli in Finland”.
Gonçalo has been involved in the revival process of local Gaita bagpipes in Portugal, by researching, playing, teaching and building bagpipes as well as maintaining a professional bagpipe making workshop that he has now moved to Helsinki, and transformed into a “Woodwind Research Lab.”
His research interests are in the disciplines of Music, Ethnomusicology, Organology, as well as Art & Design, History & Archaeology, with a special interest in the subjects of Instrument Building, Tuning and Temperament.
As a performing artist, Gonçalo has worked as a music composer and guest musician on live and recorded performances, interpreting an array of European bagpipes, and whistles. Although his bagpipes ground him in the folk music universe, his original compositions are meant as storytelling, always evocative of images, clearly influenced by cinema soundtracks. Gonçalo is keen on developing the concept of “Music as Design”, and is often involved in music projects that involve video production and the visual arts. 

www.Finndit.org | www.GoncaloCruz.com

Music Technology department

Prof. Jan Schacher (Switzerland | Finland)

From 2003 onwards, Jan was an Associate Researcher at the Institute for Computer Music and Sound Technology at the Zurich University of the Arts, where he led research projects that dealt with a.o. Musical Gesture, Immersive Media, and Surround Sound from a position of artistic as well as systematic research.

Since 2021 Jan Schacher is Professor of Music and Technology at the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts, Helsinki.

As an artist-researcher, Jan Schacher performs on stage and other environments, working with/through sound and presence. Trained as an instrumentalist, composer and digital artists, the focus of his practice has shifted from using sounds to be organised as music to seeing the body as the central site of action, perception, and culture. He investigates how the musician’s body, acting as resonator for sound’s presences, establishes and grounds the intertwined relationship between inner and outer perception, between tangible musical actions and the intangible presence of sound, between the different subject’s agencies towards/with/through sound.