Not only her work spans over more than 50 years and englobes music composition, performance, theatre and sound installations, but she also has worked with the biggest names in the field, like Stravinsky, Berio, Cage, Stockhausen, just to name a few. Here she comes back on the stories of these unique encounters, and also how she firstly brought this kind of music to Brazil.

Jocy de Oliveira has been involved as a composer/author in a variety of media since the early 1960s utilizing acoustic and electronic instruments, music-theatre, installations, texts, graphics, video, and audiences in an approach to an organic development of performance/composition works.

Her operas were released on 6 DVDs distributed by NAXOS Video Library. Her most recent work is a cinematic opera Liquid Voices – A história de Mathilda Segalescu is a feature film in process of finalization and distribution to International Film Festivals in 2019.

Author of five books published in Brazil, France and the USA, Jocy de Oliveira recently launched Dialogue with Letters, published by SESI SP, 2014, which was acclaimed by the media and received the most important literature prize in Brazil – Jabuti Literature First Prize, 2015. This same year the French edition of this book was very successfully launched in Paris by Editions Honoré Champion as part of the Sorbonne musicology collection. In 2016 the book was selected as finalist for the Premio Rio de Literatura. In 2018 a book Leituras de Jocy coordinated by Rodrigo Cicchelli and Manoel Correa do Lago was released by Editora SESI SP compiling analyses and reflections from 27 authors on her work. FLIP – the most important Brazilian International literature Festival held in Paraty July, 2018 focused on her works and honored her during its opening and two other different presentations.

She was honored with the invitation to write a chapter on Stravinsky ‘s new book – Abécédaire Stravinsky, organized by the Stravinsky Foundation and being published by Éditions La Baconnière, Genève 2018/2019.

She received a number of grants and awards, such as Guggenheim Foundation (2005) Rockefeller Foundation (1983 and 2007), Bogliasco Foundation (2004 and 2016), CAPS (New York Council on the Arts), besides Vitae and Rioarte Foundations in Brazil. She was elected a life member of the Academia Brasileira de Musica, holds a Master of Arts degree (1968) from Washington University, St. Louis, USA and received an Honorary Doctorate from the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, 2016.

In Portuguese

Pioneira no desenvolvimento de um trabalho multimídia no Brasil envolvendo música, teatro, instalações, texto e vídeo, é a primeira entre os compositores nacionais a compor e dirigir suas óperas buscando reformular o formato convencional operístico.

Suas peças tem sido apresentadas em teatros e festivais como Berliner Festspiele, Haus der Kulturen der Welt , Hebbel Theater em Berlim, StaadtsTheater – Darmstadt, Bayerischer Rudfunk – Munique, Festivals Dresdner Tage der Zeitgenössischen Musik – Desden, Expo 2000 Hannover, Ludwigshafen Opera Festival, Salzburg Festival – Aspekte, Hayden Planetarium, Carnegie Hall, Brooklyn Academy – em New York, New Music America Festivals, Miami Planetarium, Bellas Artes – Mexico, Teatro Avenida, Buenos Aires, Orquesta Sinfonica del Sodre, Uruguai, Orquesta Sinfônica Nacional de Cuba, Radio France – Paris, Gaudeamus e Gulbenkian Foundations, Chengdu University – China. No Brasil, suas obras têm sido apresentadas anualmente em diversos teatros e festivais incluindo os Theatros Municipal de São Paulo e do Rio de Janeiro e em diferentes capitais.

Como compositora e pianista, gravou 25 discos no Brasil, Inglaterra, EUA, Alemanha, Itália e no México; registrou nos EUA e no Brasil a obra pianística de Olivier Messiaen (selo NAXOS). Oito de suas óperas multimídias foram gravadas em DVDs distribuídos pela NAXOS Video Library e pelo SESC, SP.