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Álvaro Teixeira Lopes is Professor in the Department of Communication and Art at Aveiro University, as well as the Artistic Director of Santa Cecilia International Competition (CISC), and Director of Curso de Música Silva Monteiro (CMSM). Álvaro Teixeira Lopes attended the Conservatório de Música do Porto and continued his studies in Vienna and Paris with Paul Badura Skoda, Noel Flores and Marian Ribicky. Awarded with several prizes, he developed intense national and international activities as a soloist and chamber musician and has been invited to play in some of the most prestigious festivals internationally. Artistic director of several festivals, he has directed numerous Master-Classes in Portugal, France, Brazil, Taiwan, China, Spain and Italy. Frequently invited to join panels of piano competitions, he has been jury member of the Orbetello International Competition, Rospigliosi, Rina Sala Gallo, Iturbi, Compositores de España, Isidor Basič, Pro-Piano, Concours International de Piano de Lyon, Concours International d’Epinal, César Frank International Competition, Cleveland Virtualoso, Maestro Arts Taiwan, Porto Piano International Competition, Festival Internacional de Piano do Rio de Janeiro, and many others all over the world. |
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Born in 1979 in Vila do Conde (Portugal), Paulo Oliveira is one of the most sought-after Portuguese pianists of his generation. He began his musical studies at the age of nine with Joaquim Bento. He then entered the Academia de Música de São Pio X with a grant from the Dr. Elias de Aguiar Foundation. In this school he studied with Margarida Almeida and Felipe Silvestre and graduated with honors in 1998. He later studied with Tania Achot, completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Piano Performance at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. Paulo Oliveira continued his studies with Sequeira Costa at the University of Kansas, with whom he studied for nearly a decade, thus benefitting from the knowledge his master received directly from Vianna da Motta, Mark Hamburg, Edwin Fischer, Marguerite Long and Jacques Février. He finished his Master’s degree in 2005, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Later, in 2009, he concluded his Doctor of Musical Arts with honors with the sponsorship of the Portuguese government – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia. Among his most relevant teachers and mentors were Helena Sá e Costa, Luiz de Moura Castro, Andrei Diev, Vladimir Viardo, Vitaly Margulis, Aldo Ciccolini, Paul Badura-Skoda and Dmitri Bashkirov. Paulo Oliveira has been awarded several prizes in national and international competitions, including the Vianna da Motta International Piano Competition, the 1st prize at the Bártok-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition, the 2nd prize at the Estoril Competition|El Corte Inglés Prize and the 1st prize at the 2010 Young Artists Festival|Chopin Prize organized by the Metropolitan Orchestra of Lisbon. He was also the winner of the Kansas University Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. His duo with cellist Teresa Valente Pereira was awarded after a recital in Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana. Paulo Oliveira has performed solo, chamber and orchestral concerts in many European countries as well as in North and South America and has recorded for RPD Antena 2, Radio France and Catalunya Radio. He appeared as a soloist with the Kansas University Symphony Orchestra, the Espinho Classical Orchestra, Algarve Orchestra, North Orchestra, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with such conductors as Nicholas Uljanov, Steven McDonald, Pedro Neves, Jean-Marc Burfin, Ferreira Lobo, Cesário Costa, and Daniel Klajner. Paulo combines his concert career with a dedicated teaching activity. He taught at Lisbon’s National Conservatory and at the Piaget Institute. He is currently a faculty member of the Santa Cecília Music Academy and of the National Academy of Advanced Orchestral Studies | Metropolitana, both in Lisbon. He has been a judge at several national and international piano competitions, and he is regularly invited to give master classes. Paulo Oliveira is a board member of the European Piano Teachers Association – EPTA Portugal. His latest CD Iberian Impressions, released by Odradek Records, received a Global Music Award in the USA, in the Classical Piano category. |
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Luso-American pianist Jill Lawson was born in Mexico in 1974 and grew up in Belgium. She is currently based in Portugal. Jill learned how to read music before she learned the alphabet. Today she speaks five languages fluently, but still prefers to communicate through music rather than through words. Her music provides her with a much richer vocabulary, and it lies closer to her heart. Her life experiences in the last few years have helped to further enrich her range of interpretation abilities. She feels that her way of playing has become more natural, and because of this when performing she feels almost at one with the public. She won several awards and distinctions in both national and international competitions, such as the 2º prize at the International Vianna da Motta Competition (Macau, 1997); finalist at the Classical Fellowship Awards from the American Pianists Association (Indianapolis, 2003); 4º prize at the International Schubert Competition (Dortmund, 2001); finalist at the International Piano Competition Premi Principat d’Andorra (Andorra, 2001); 1º prize at the Concurso Cidade de Covilhã (Portugal, 2001); 2º prize at the Concurso de Interpretação”(Estoril, Portugal, 2001); Laureate of the Tenuto contest (Brussels, 1995). Jill began her piano studies when she was eight years old in Antwerp with Heidi Hendrickx and Levente Kende. She later studied in Fiesole with Maria Tipo and in Amsterdam with Jan Wijn. In 2004 she obtained her Master of Music at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore under Leon Fleisher and Ellen Mack. She attended several master classes with various pianists including Dimitri Bashkirov, Vladimir Viardo, Vitaly Margulis, Sequeira Costa, Helena Sá e Costa and Gyorgy Sebok. She took part in the award-winning documentary by Roel van Dalen Een hartstochtelijk Les (2001) during a workshop in Belgais with Maria João Pires. Jill has performed as a soloist with orchestra and recitals in the US, Europe and Asia. Simultaneously, she remains an active chamber musician, having collaborated with Ilya Grubert, Pavel Gomziakov, Artur Pizarro, David Cohen, Carlos Damas, Eleonora Karpukhova, Martin Sued, soprano Elisabete Matos. She forms the Lawson & Lawson Duo with her brother, violinist Eliot Lawson and is a member of the MPQ Quartet of Cascais since 2021. She is an adjunct piano professor at the Superior School of Applied Arts (ESART) of the Polytechnical Institute of Castelo Branco since 2008 and coordinator of the piano class of the Escola de Música do Colégio Moderno in Lisbon since 2014, both in Portugal. She has collaborated with the National Ballet of Portugal in Impromptus by Sasha Waltz and The Green Table by Kurt Jooss She recorded the complete chamber music for violin and piano of Portuguese composers António Fragoso and Frederico de Freitas (Brilliant Classics 2013 and 2015), the Hindemith Violin and Piano Sonatas (Brilliant Classics 2014) and more recently the Complete Chamber Music Vol. 2 by Joly Braga Santos (Toccata Classics 2020). |
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PhD in Music Theory (Aveiro University 2007) and graduated in Organ (Escola Superior de Música de Lisbon, 2000, under the guidance of Prof. Antoine Sibertin-Blac, with maximum final course grade). He has also a master's degree in Electrical Engineering (Instituto Superior Técnico, 1999). He teaches Organ at the University of Aveiro, plus other specific classes. He is the current chairman of the board of AMPO (Association Musical Pro-Organo). He guided organ Master Classes at the Gregorian Weeks in Viseu (between 2013 and 2023). He has been a regular jury member of organ and piano competitions (Vila Verde; Aveiro; Coimbra). In between 2009 and 2014 he was coordinator and professor at the Piaget Institute (Viseu, Almada), where he taught in theoretical musical areas and supervised master's theses. He regularly performs as liturgical and concert organist (e.g., in 2023: Missa Crismal, Sé de Aveiro; Vila Real's cathedral, in the regular anual concert series; Festival International de Órgão de Braga, and Santo Tirso). In terms of his own composition, António Mota currently has 8 works composed for organ, as well as many arrangements (for Iberian and modern organs, for 2 and 4 hands/feet). |
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Diocesan priest of Coimbra, graduated in Theology from the Faculty of Theology of the Catholic University and in Portuguese Studies from the Faculty of Arts of the same University. He currently serves as Episcopal Vicar, parish priest in the city of Coimbra, president of the Board of Directors of the São Teotónio School, teacher and director of the School of Theology and Ministries and the Diocesan School of Sacred Music. |