The ARTISTS of the festival

Sonia Ray is a double bassist, researcher and professor at the School of Music of the Federal University of Goias (Brazil) where she teaches double bass, chamber music, methodology of research in music, and analysis and criticism of contemporan/ music. She has a doctoral degree in Double Bass Performance and Pedagogy from the University of Iowa, where she studied with international soloist Diana Gannett. Ray has performed as a soloist and as a chamber musician in several Brazilian and North American cities. She is an advocate for new music for the bass as has premiered and commissioned several Brazilian new works for the instrument. Ray is a co-founding member and director of the ABC-Brazilian Society of Bassists, through which she has idealized and co-organized six international double bass encounters, two double bass composition contests and a solo competition. She has appeared as a presenter at the ISB - International Society of Bassists since 1997 teaching the Young Bassists as well as performing. She is the president of ANPPOM - National Society for Music Research and Graduate Studies and her major research interests lie in musical performance psychology and Brazilian music for the double bass. During the Spring Semester 2008 she was received as a Visiting Scholar at the University of North Texas where she has worked with world known soloist Jeff Bradetich.