Mário Carreira

Guitarist Mário Carreira (b. Lisbon, 1962) is a performer and teacher at the Oporto Music Conservatoire. His special areas of interest include chamber music and repertoire for voice and guitar. He studied at the National Conservatoire of Lisbon and at the University of Évora with Manuel Morais, a student of the late Emilio Pujol, and in Caen/France with Louis-Marie Feuillet at the Conservatoire National de Caen. He also studied with many early music specialists including: the late Macario Santiago Kastner, Hopkinson Smith and Anner Bylsma. He specialises in the romantic guitar, in which he has worked and been in contact with: the late Robert Spencer, Manuel Morais, Jakob Lindberg, Dr. Thomas Heck and Dr. Brian Jeffery. He is the founder of the D'Amore Ensemble. He’s also a collaborator of Tecla Editions and the author of many articles, including one available on www.hebeonline.com (Matiegka's sonata op.23). As a concert-guitarist he played in Portugal, France, Spain, Switzerland and New-Zealand. (text by Mário Carreira)

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João António Ribas's Sonata nº 1 (Andante sostenuto and Rondó-allegro non troppo), by Jorge Salgado Correia and Mário Carreira.

Sofia Sousa Rocha

Composer Sofia Sousa Rocha was born in 1986, in Braga. She started studying piano at the age of seven, enrolling four years later at the Conservatório de Música Calouste Gulbenkian in Braga. She studied violin with Manuel António Sá. In 2001 she started her first Composition studies with Paulo Bastos at the Conservatory of Braga, where she also studied Electroacoustic. In 2004 she successfully applied to the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (ESML) to complete a First Degree in Composition, graduating in 2008, with a mark of 18 (out of 20). She studied with some of the most well recognized Portuguese composers such as Christopher Bochmann, Luís Tinoco, Carlos Caires and Carlos Marecos, among others. She studied singing with Sandra Medeiros between 2005 and 2008. Currently she is studying with Susana Teixeira. As a student at ESML Sofia Sousa Rocha co-organized various events, including the concerts "Peças Frescas" (Student Composers' Concerts), promoting the youngest Portuguese musicians and composers. She also co-directed the IV and V Music Festivals of the ESML in the S. Luiz Theater. Recent activities include the composition of new pieces commissioned from the Young Musicians Prize, promoted by Antena 2 – Portuguese Radio Broadcast and Alcobaça Music Festival. She has also participated in the II Reading Panel of Algarve Orchestra with “Papagaio sem penas” (2008). Subsequently this piece was selected for the season 08/09. She is currently teaching musical analysis and composition at the Escola de Música do Orfeão de Leiria / Conservatório de Artes. (text by Sofia Sousa Rocha)

Sofia Sousa Rocha's "Homenagem a Berio" (electronics) (2nd Renaissance of Portuguese Composition project on You Tube):

Nicholas McNair

Pianist Nicholas McNair, resident in Portugal since 1980, likes to see all his musical activity, composing, performing, preparation, editing, improvising or teaching, as part of a single whole. Head chorister of Canterbury Cathedral at the age of 12, he later studied at Cambridge University and the Royal College of Music. In London he wrote a series of commissioned chamber and choral works supported by the Arts Council of Great Britain, the RVW Trust and other private foundations. The British Council sponsored a concert of his works in Queluz Palace, Portugal in May 1991, and commissioned a cantata “Magnificat” in 1992. He worked with Sir John Eliot Gardiner, researching and preparing for performance the principal operas of Mozart and Beethoven, all recorded by Deutsche Grammophon-Archiv. His editions also include the operas Antigono by Antonio Mazzoni (Lisbon October 1755) and La Notte Critica by Niccolò Piccinni (Lisbon 1767). A teacher at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon, he works frequently with the Gulbenkian Choir and Orchestra as organist and pianist. He has collaborated as editor, repetiteur or composer, with stage directors and composers such as Robert Wilson and Philip Glass (Lisbon, Madrid, New York), Carina Reich and Bogdan Szyber (Lisbon, Stockholm), Terry Jones and Luís Tinoco (Lisbon), António Pinho Vargas, Luís Bragança Gil, Tim Carroll, Paulo Matos, André Gago etc. He has created live music for 150 silent films, appearing also in the Cannes Festival of 1995 and at the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., in 1997. He gave a recital of improvisation at the 1st Mafra Festival (1997), and the first of his 8 CDs, “Classical Improvisations”, was released by Eroica in 1998. His improvisations (live and in transcription) have been used in performances with poets and actors such as André Gago, and in concerts of his works (e.g. Mãe d’Água, Lisboa March 2003). (text by Nicholas McNair)

Miguel Henriques

Miguel Henriques has devoted his attention to major works of the pianistic repertoire. His recital programmes include pieces from different styles and periods from Bach to Beethoven, Chopin, Janácek, Schubert, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Scriabine, Shostakovitch, Messiaen, Schnittke, Lopes-Graça and António Pinho Vargas. From these two well celebrated Portuguese composers are also his last recordings on CD. Born in the city of Porto (Portugal), graduated at the Lisbon and Porto Conservatories and at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow, Miguel Henriques took his master's degree at the University of Kansas in the United States. Complementary fields of professional activity in Musicology, Aesthetics, Composition, Conducting, Dramatic Expression, and Piano Methodology. Professor of piano at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, Miguel Henriques is regularly invited to teach in masterclasses in Portugal and abroad. (text by Miguel Henriques)

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Miguel Henriques plays António Fragoso's Prelude (from "Petite Suite"):

Daniel Moreira

Born in Porto, 1983, composer Daniel Moreira began his music studies in 1994. At the Porto Music Conservatory, he studied guitar with Artur Caldeira and composition with João-Heitor Rigaud. In 2006 he graduated from Faculdade de Economia do Porto with a B.A. in Economics, for which he was awarded the Banco de Portugal Prize for best student of Economics in 2006. He studies at Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo – ESMAE, Porto - since 2006, where he has studied composition with Dimitris Andrikopoulos and Fernando Lapa, and electronic music with Carlos Guedes. Also at ESMAE, he received lessons from Klaas de Vries, Magnus Lindberg and Jonathan Harvey (these last two in cooperation with Casa da Música). He is currently attending the Master´s Degree in Composition and Music Theory. In 2007, two of his pieces have been selected for reading sessions at Casa da Música: Magma, for an ensemble of 15 instrumentalists (Remix Ensemble, conductor: Rolf Gupta) and a preliminary version of the String Quartet (Diotima Quartet). He has received an award at Gian Battista Viotti International Music Competition 2007 in Vercelli, Italy (3rd prize for Noctis Lumina, for viola solo) and an Honorable Mention at Póvoa de Varzim Internacional Composition Competition 2008 (O Escuro Silêncio da Chuva, for female voice and ensemble). In 2009, he is young composer-in-residence at Casa da Música. Several works will be commissioned, two of which for the resident ensembles (Oporto National Orchestra, Remix Ensemble). He is a chorister at Coral de Letras da Universidade do Porto since 2004. (adapted from text by Daniel Moreira)

Fernando Miguel Jalôto

Harpsichordist and Organist Fernando Miguel Jalôto graduated at the Royal Conservatory, The Hague - Early Music and Historical Performance Practice Department - as Bachelor of Music in 2002 and as Master of Music at 2005. His main Harpsichord teacher was Jacques Ogg and he attended Master-Classes with Gustav Leonhardt, Ketil Haugsand, Laurence Cummings and Ilton Wjuniski. He also studied Baroque Organ, Clavichord and Early Music Theory, Interpretation and Performance Practice. He’s Master of Music at the Art and Communication Department from the University of Aveiro (Portugal). As a student, Miguel participated in Baroque Orchestra projects with Jaap ter Linden, Elizabeth Wallfish, Ton Koopman, Christina Pluhar, Ryo Terakado and Roy Goodman. He was a member of the Académie Baroque Européenne de Ambronay and participated in MUSICA Masterclasses (Belgium). Since 2005 he’s the regular harpsichord player at the Lisbon-based Baroque Orchestra Divino Sospiro, under the direction of Enrico Onofri, with which he often performs at some very important venues in Portugal and abroad. As basso continuo player, he performed in the "Folle Journée" in Tokyo and in Lisbon. Already twice soloist with Casa da Música Baroque Orchestra (Oporto), he plays regularly with this orchestra. He recorded a CD with works by Antonio Soler, with Lyra Baroque Orchestra, for the Spanish label Glossa; he also recorded for Armide (France). He collaborates with modern chamber orchestras like Camerata Academica Salzburg and Sinfónica de Galicia. Founder and Artistic Director of the Early Music group Ludovice Ensemble, he gives regularly solo and chamber music recitals, covering a large range of repertoire. He’s currently Harpsichord and Basso Continuo guest teacher in Évora's University and Harpsichord accompanist at Oporto's Music Conservatory. (adapted from text by Miguel Jalôto)

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Hugo Ribeiro

Composer Hugo Ribeiro was born in Lisbon in 1983 and began his musical studies with Vera Belozorovitch (piano) and Carlos Marecos (Composition Techniques and Analysis), concluding his Piano Secondary Course in 2005. He finished his composition degree in 2005 at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa where he studied with Luís Tinoco, António Pinho Vargas and Christopher Bochmann, amongst others. In 2007 he obtained his Mmus degree in composition at the Royal Academy of Music in London where he studied with Simon Bainbridge and Paul Patterson. In 2004 he has frequented the summer composition courses in Darmstadt where he worked with Bryan Ferneyhough, Georg Friedrich Haas, Toshio Hosokawa and Tadeusz Wielecki. Also in 2004 he attended an Orchestral Conducting Course directed by the conductor Jean Sébastien Béreau. In 2004, 2006 and 2007 he was selected for the Gulbenkian Workshop for Portuguese Young Composers, where his pieces Message-Homage, Impromptu and In memoriam were premiered by the Gulbenkian Orchestra conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne. From other public presentations of his music one can highlight the premiere of Echoes for 15 instruments at the Foyer of the Queen Elisabeth Hall (London) performed by soloist from the London Sinfonietta and Royal Academy of Music, conducted by Christopher Austin; and the premiere of Letter for Kundera for 14 players at the Spitalfields Festival (London) performed by the Manson Ensemble conducted by Baldur Brönnimann. He was distinguished with the 1st Prize in the 2nd International Composition Competition Póvoa de Varzim “Orchestra Category” (2007) and won the national competition Opera in Creation 2008 at the S. Luiz Theatre in Lisbon (Portugal). He’s currently preparing his PhD at the Canterbury Christ Church University (where he works with Prof. Paul Max Edlin and Prof. Paul Patterson, as supervisor) and working in the score of Os Mortos Viajam de Metro, an opera in Portuguese with libretto by Armando Nascimento Rosa. (text by Hugo Ribeiro)

Hugo Ribeiro's "rust coloured landscape", by Tadashi Imai (piano) and the Royal Academy of Music Composers Orchestra, cond. Christopher Austin (2nd Renaissance of Portuguese Composition project on You Tube):

Luís Rodrigues

Photo: Alfredo Rocha

Baritone Luís Rodrigues studied in Lisbon at Conservatório Nacional with José Carlos Xavier and at Escola Superior de Música with Helena Pina Manique. In his country he won the “Luísa Todi” Singing Contest and the RDP-Young Musicians Award (with pianist David Santos), and abroad the 2nd prize at the Concours Festival de la Mélodie Française de Saint-Chamond (France, 1996) and the 1st prize ex-aequo at the PoulencPlus Competition ( New York, 1999 ). He’s regularly invited to S. Carlos Opera Theatre in Lisbon, where he performed roles such as Shaunard, Masetto, Count Robinson, Harlekin, Ping, Figaro, Guglielmo and Marcello. He sang Marcello and Germont at Oporto´s Coliseo and took part in productions of Hänsel und Gretel, Die Zauberflöte, Cosi fan Tutte, Cunning Little Vixen, L’Elisir d’Amore, D. Giovanni, Tosca, Carmen and Il barbiere di Siviglia throughout his country. Under João Paulo Santos direction he sang in Sweeney Todd, Albert Herring, The English Cat and Neues vom Tage. His interpretation of Semicúpio in “Guerras do Alecrim e Mangerona” won him the Portuguese press award for classical musicians Prémio Bordalo - Casa da Imprensa . He performed in many occasions with Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra and Chorus, singing Oratorio with Michel Corboz and Opera in concert versions with Lawrence Foster. His concert performances also include “Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen” and “Poème de l’amour et de la mer” with Portuguese Symphonic Orchestra and “Kindertotenlieder” with National Orchestra of Oporto. He recorded Suppé’s Requiem with Gulbenkian Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Michel Corboz (Virgin Classics) and Schubert’s Winterreise with David Santos (AboutMusic). (adapted from text by Luís Rodrigues)

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João Godinho

Composer João Godinho was born in Lisbon, 1976, and took music and piano lessons from the age of six to seventeen. The option of studying music composition was preceded by a degree in Business Administration. He graduated in composition in 2006 at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, having studied with Sérgio Azevedo, João Madureira, Christopher Bochmann, Luís Tinoco, Carlos Fernandes and José Luís Ferreira. His music interests are not restrained to classical and contemporary music. Jazz, ethnic, world, brazilian and latin music; pop, electronic and recent trends; music for film, theatre and dance; they all have a strong influence in his activity as a musician. As a self-taught student, he dedicates a special attention to improvisation, having also studied with Nicholas McNair, and to jazz, having studied at the Hot Clube de Portugal jazz school. Together with Alexandra Ávila, he founded the Lisbon Jazz Summer School, whose first edition took place in July 2005 at the Centro Cultural de Belém. His professional debut was in 2006 with the premiere of Kaminari – Ballet Music for choreographer César Moniz’s new ballet company, followed by a premiere of De Queda em Queda, a piece for piano and string quartet, commissioned by OrchestrUtópica. In 2007 he was commissioned a piece for marimba solo, by Antena2/ Young Musicians Competition. In 2008 he premiered “O Marionetista”, for alto saxophone and string quartet, comissioned by OrchestrUtópica and Festival de Música do Estoril. In the same year, he wrote fado arrangements for orchestra (and a version for small ensemble), for fado singer Joana Amendoeira. Apart from his music studies, he maintains several professional activities connected to the music field. Since September 2008 he has been working as a musical adviser for the programming of Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon. (adapted from text by João Godinho)

João Godinho's "De Queda em Queda", by Elsa Silva (piano), José Pereira and Jorge Maggiorani (violins), Jano Lisboa (viola) (2nd Renaissance of Portuguese Composition project on You Tube):

ka'mi

Composer [ka’mi] was born in Lisbon, in 1973. He studied guitar and graduated in Musicology in 2001 by the UNL-FCSH (under Mário Vieira de Carvalho, Rui Vieira Nery, Salwa Castelo-Branco, Manuel Carlos de Brito, Luísa Cymbron and Tomás Henriques, among others), then studied Composition at the ESML (Christopher Bochmann, António Pinho Vargas, Luís Tinoco, João Madureira, Roberto Perez and Sérgio Azevedo, among others). He attended the Summer Courses in Darmstadt in 2004 (Brian Ferneyhough, Georg Friedrich Haas, Toshio Hosokawa, Chaya Czernowin, Enno Poppe and Wolfgang Mitterer). In 2005 he attended the Composition Seminars with Emmanuel Nunes at the Gulbenkian Foundation. In 2006, the work for ensemble O Berio is presented in the “Música Viva” Festival in Lisbon. Selected for the 3rd, 5th and 6th Gulbenkian Orchestra Workshop for Young Composers with the works Fragment for Ensemble, Glosa (in memoriam) for Orchestra and Peça para Eça for Orchestra, conducted by Guillaume Bourgogne and Joana Carneiro. After graduating in Composition, he pursued his studies in Composition with a post-graduate course with Gerd Kühr and Pierluigi Billone at KUG in Graz, Austria. He was selected for the 1st Atelier for young Composers with Algarve Orchestra in 2007 with the work Oito Minutos para Orquestra, conducted by Cesário Costa. He attended the IMPULS 2007 seminars in Graz, supervised by Beat Furrer, Enno Poppe and the ensemble KlangforumWien, and was invited to be part of the official Portuguese section for the Festival ISCM - World Music Days 2008, in Lithuania. He was selected for the Festival “Steirischer Herbst” in co-production with “Musikprotokoll”- ORF. In 2008, the work Rastos de uma Resposta for trumpet was commissioned by Antena 2/RTP for the Young Musicians Award 2008. He’s currently producing his Doctorate thesis with Prof. Reinhard Kapp at MDW in Vienna, Austria, on the subject of Microtonality. (adapted from text by ka'mi).

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ka'mi's "Jenseits des klanges", by the Ensemble für Neue Musik KUG, cond. Edo Micic (2nd Renaissance of Portuguese Composition project on You Tube:

Luísa Tender

Pianist Luísa Tender was born in Porto, Portugal, in 1977. She had her first piano lessons at the age of four. After graduating from Escola Superior de Música in Porto as a pupil of Pedro Burmester, she continued her musical studies with Vitaly Margulis in Los Angeles and Irina Zaritskaya at the Royal College of Music in London. She was awarded the degree of Master of Music in Performance Studies from the Royal College of Music in 2002. She undertook further piano study with Artur Pizarro in Brighton in 2003, and in 2004 she was awarded the Diplôme Superieur d’Exécution from the École Normale de Musique in Paris, as a student of Marian Rybicki. In recent years, she has given solo and chamber music recitals in most of the main Portuguese concert halls and international music festivals, together with performances in Spain, Holland, Italy, Cyprus and Brazil. She has recorded solo and chamber works by Scarlatti, Brahms, Prokofiev and Berg for the Portuguese national broadcast. A recent review of her all-Schubert recital in Matosinhos in 2003 referred to her playing as ‘very moving, whilst never losing attention to details’, whilst her Sintra International Festival recital in 2004 was praised for its ‘lovely freshness’. She’s been the recipient of a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and a study support grant from the Royal College of Music. She is currently a professor of music at Escola Superior de Artes Aplicadas (ESART) in Castelo Branco, where she teaches Music Analysis and Chamber Music. (adapted from text by Luísa Tender)

Discography

Madalena Soveral

Madalena Soveral was born in Porto, where she studied music, first under mother guidance, Hélia Soveral, later under Reine Gianoli, Marian Rybicki and Claude Helffer. In 1966 she was awarded the “900 Musicale Europeo” prize, in Naples (Italy). Madalena Soveral has given regular concerts since 1990, both solo and with orchestra, as well as various forms of chamber music festivals of Naples, Santiago de Compostela, Sceaux, Festival de Montpellier-Radio France, Mantova (Italy), The UNESCO Twentieth Century Music Festival (Paris), Música Nova (Brasil), The 1st Lisbon Festival of Contemporary Musics (Lisbon, T.N.S.C.), to name but a few. During her career, she has focused on a 20th century repertoire working with a variety of composers and performers. She has performed the world premiere of numerous pieces, including those written especially for her: Estudos de Sonoridades (Filipe Pires), Interrogations (Miguel Graça Moura), Dominos (Sharon Kanach), In Tempore, for piano and electronic (João Pedro Oliveira), and Episode, for two pianos and two percussions (Francis Bayer). Coordenator Professor at the Escola Superior de Música e das Artes do Espectáculo do Porto, she’s been working in the last hears on a research project on 20th Century Portuguese Piano Music, at the University of Paris 8. Étude Analytique des Litanies du feu et de la mer d’Emmanuel Nunes, carried out between 1997-99, is the first part of that work. In 2005 she completed the Doctorat in Music with the teses Quatre compositeurs, Quatre oeuvres: la musique portugaise pour piano des années 90, about the piano’s compositions by António Pinho Vargas, Filipe Pires, João Pedro Oliveira and João Rafael. Since 2006 she joined the research Center CESEM of the Universidade Nova de Lisboa. (adapted from text by Madalena Soveral)

Discography

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