NUM 1083
Title: Música Coral Portuguesa do Século XXArtist: Coro de Câmara de Lisboa
Composers: Fernando Lopes Graça, Luiz de Freitas Branco, Joly Braga Santos
The Coro de Câmara de Lisboa (Lisbon Chamber Choir) was founded in 1978, by Prof. Teresita Gutierrez Marques, as Lisbon National Conservatory’s chamber choir. The choir is formed by twenty young musicians who perform — a cappella or in collaboration with instrumental ensembles — portuguese and foreign works from the Renaissance to the 21st century. They have already performed several world premières.
The Choir has always been very active, maintaining an artistic level which is unanimously applauded by the public and the critics. They have performed all over Portugal and in the most important concert halls of Lisbon (Belém Cultural Centre, Gulbenkian Foundation, S. Luiz and Trindade Theatres, etc.), and has participated in the most significant cultural exhibitions (Capuchos and Sintra festivals, the Gulbenkian Festival of Ancient Music, Lisbon ’94 – European Capital of Culture, Expo ’98 – World Exposition of Lisbon, the International Festival of Organ in Lisbon, etc.).
Abroad, the Choir has also performed extensively. Invited by institutions such as the European Choir Federation, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Fundação Oriente or the Ministries of Culture of Portugal, Spain and Cape Verde, to give a few examples, the Choir has sung, among other places, in Madrid, Cuenca, León, Seville, Sória, Vitoria (Spain), Paris, Strasbourg, Rouen, Caen, Mont. St. Michel (France), Brussels, Malines (Belgium), Amsterdam (the Netherlands), Rome, Bergamo, Biella, Bolzano, Novara, Trento, Turin, Verona (Italy), Bonn (Germany), Vienna (Austria), London (UK), Montréal (Canada), New York, Santa Barbara, San Diego, San José (USA), Belo Horizonte, Florianópolis, New Hamburg, Porto Alegre (Brazil), Montevideu (Uruguay), Buenos Aires (Argentina), Puebla (Mexico), Santiago de Cuba (Cuba), Macao and Cape Verde.
In its three participations in the International Choir Competition of Tolosa (Spain), Coro de Câmara de Lisboa has obtained a 1st and a 3 rd prize in the Polyphony class and two 2nd prizes in the Folksong category
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NUM 1080
Title: Portuguese Contemporary FluteArtist: Luis Meireles
Composers: Fernando Lapa, Cândido Lima, Fernanda Corrêa de Oliveira, Carlos Azevedo, Fernando B. Valente, António Victorino D’Almeida, Alexandre Delgado, João Heitor Rigaud, Filipe Pires, Fernando Lopes Graça
As a soloist, Luis Meireles has appeared with the leading Portuguese orchestras and a number of foreign orchestras, including the Czech Philharmonic, the Bratislava Classical Chamber Orchestra and the Kazakhstan National Orchestra. He teaches at the music conservatory in Porto and leads a number of masterclasses in Hungary, Greece, Russia and Macedonia. He performs on hand made wooden flutes from the renowned family workshop of the master Anton Braun, which has a tradition extending back more than 100 years.
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NUM 1077
Title: Compositores Portugueses ContemporâneosArtist: Sofia Lourenço
Composers: Jose Vianna da Motta, Luiz Costa, Berta Alves de Sousa, Maria Teresa Macedo, Fernando Lopes Graça, Filipe Pires, Álvaro salazar, Carlos Azevedo
Composer, conductor, teacher and music critic, Álvaro Salazar was born in 1938 in Porto, where he started the musical studies he would later conclude in Lisbon’s National Conservatory. In 1962 he graduated in Law from Lisbon University (class of 1957/62) and would later begin a diplomatic career that he abandoned in 1972. He has since then dedicated himself exclusively to music.
He was a Composition and Ensemble Music (20th century) lecturer at the Music School of the National Conservatory and taught Introduction to Electroacoustic Music, 20th Century Music History and Aesthetics at the Porto and Lisbon Higher Schools of Music. His masters outside Portugal were Gilbert Amy (Analysis), Hans Swarowsky and Pierre Dervaux (Orchestra Conduction). As a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation scholarship holder he attended GRM’s Electroacoustic Music Internship in Paris.
He was unanimously awarded the highest grade in the final exams of the conduction course at the École Normale of Paris. In 1978 he founded the Music Workshop, a group dedicated to the study and promotion of 20th century music and of which he is the artistic director.
He conducted the most important Portuguese orchestras and also performed as a conductor in Spain, Colombia, France, Germany and Italy. He was responsible for performing for the first time in Portugal and abroad pieces from such significant composers as Janáček, Ives, Webern, Villa-Lobos, Varèse, Eisler, Dessau, Kurt Weill, Feldman, Ligeti, Georgescu, Láng, Finnissy, Acilú, Barce, Olavide, Marco, etc.
As a composer, public speaker and jury member of composition competitions he participated in several courses and international festivals (Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Germany, Spain, Italy and Poland). He was also present as an invited critic at the festivals of Royan, East Berlin and Warsaw.
He regularly collaborates in the Gulbenkian Contemporary Music Meeting and between 1979 and 1985 was the main conductor of the Chamber Group of Estoril Festival.
He was awarded the Golden Merit Medal of Porto’s City Council for the services rendered. He is presently the president of the Portuguese Music Council and a member of the Directing Board of the Portuguese Authors Society.
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NUM 1076
Title: A Canção Portuguesa
Artists: Carlos Guilherme, Armando Vidal
Composers: António Fragoso, Ivo Cruz, Luis de Freitas Branco, Vianna da Motta
José Vianna da Motta (Composer, Arranger)
Born: April 22, 1868 – São Tomé Island (Isle St. Thomas), Portuguese Africa
Died: May 31, 1948 – Lisbon, Portugal
The Eminent Portuguese pianist, pedagogue and composer, José Vianna da Motta, was born in São Tomé Island, a Portuguese territory at the time where his father, also a great music amateur, had opened a pharmacy. His family returned to Mainland Portugal when he was a year old, and settled in Colares, near Sintra. His unusual talents for music received their first decisive stimulus. He studied first with local teacher, then attended the Conservatory of Music in Lisbon, and by 1881 (age 13) was giving his first public concert, with a programme including works of his own composition. Prince Dom Fernando and the Countess of Edla were quick to appreciate his precocious talents and decided to sponsor his studies. Consequently, immediately after finishing his tertiary studies at the age of only 14, he went to Berlin to seek new educational and artistic horizons. “I travelled there in October 1882”, recalled the Master in later years. “From then until May 1914, I lived in Germany interrupting my time only for performing tours in Europe and the two Americas. Thus I was able to observe at close hand the incomparable world of music in Germany during the transition from the 19th century to the 20th, one of the richest periods ever in the history of music in all respects: creation, interpretation, aesthetic and philosophical research, and historic and academic discoveries.”
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NUM 1075
Title: Themes For The Pavilion Of The Future
Artist: João Pedro Oliveira
Composer: João Pedro Oliveira
João Pedro Oliveira is one of the most prominent Portuguese composers of his generation. He began his music studies at the Gregorian Institute of Lisbon where he studied organ performance. From 1985 to 1990 he moved to the US as a Fulbright student, with a fellowship from Gulbenkian Foundations, where he completed a PhD and two MA’s in Music at the University of New York at Stony Brook.
The main prizes awarded to him so far include:
Magisterium Prize in Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (France) – 2008
Giga Hertz Award. 2008.
1st Prize in Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (France) – 2007
1st Prize in Roma Soundtrack Competition (Italy) – 2007
1st Prize in Yamaha-Visiones Sonoras Competition (Mexico) – 2007
1st Prize in Musica Nova competition (Czech Republic) – 2007
1st Prize in Metamorphoses competition (Belgium) – 2006
Honorable Mention in Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (France) – 2005
Selected work in Tribune Internacionale de Musique Electroacoustique (Italy) – 2005
1st Prize in Musica Nova competition (Czech Republic)- 2005
2nd Prize in S. Paulo Electroacoustic Music Competition (Brasil) – 2005
1st Prize in Earplay competition (USA) – 2003
1st Prize in Bourges Electroacoustic Music Competition (France) – 2002
1st Prize in Alea III Competition (USA) – 1996
Oliveira is Senior Professor at Aveiro University (Portugal), teaching composition, electroacoustic music and analysis. He has published several articles in journals, and has written a book about analysis and 20th century music theory. Through this work he has contributed to the development of a new generation of Portuguese composers, and many of his students have also received national and international awards.
Recently he has been exploring the possibilities of interaction between instrumental and electroacoustic sounds, and most of his recent works use both media
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Classical & Contemporary Music 