In 2019 Luís Tinoco celebrates his 50th anniversary and on this occasion in January the MIC.PT In Focus Section is dedicated to this composer, programmer, promotor of music and teacher at the Music College of Lisbon (ESML).
Luís Tinoco’s catalogue of works includes vocal and stage music, orchestral pieces with and without soloists, chamber music and pieces for solo instruments. Among his more recent projects one should highlight: the last year’s premiere performance, on November 25 at the CCB in Lisbon, of the work Cassini composed for the 25th anniversary of the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra; as well as the 2018 release by the Odradek Records of Luís Tinoco’s monographic CD – The Blue Voice of the Water. As music programmer and promotor Luís Tinoco collaborates with the Antena 2, being author and producer of the radio broadcasts dedicated to new music Geografia dos Sons (Geography of the Sounds); he is also artistic director of the Young Musicians’ Festival and Award.
"In every piece I write my goal is to have the experimental dimension, not only for the pleasure which it gives me, but also for believing that the disquiet is a fundamental element to maintain a state of auto-criticism and dissatisfaction. And this one we should never give up" – says Luís Tinoco in the interview given to the MIC.PT in the end of 2018, during the month of January available in the MIC.PT In Focus section.

Sonderart des Kreisens II (2018) for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, cello and electronics, is a new work by [ka’mi], whose premiere by the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble conducted by Pedro Carneiro, will take place in the context of the Art's Birthday 2019, on January 17 at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon. "I have always tried to get to know different aesthetic currents from the past and the present" – says [ka’mi] in the interview given to the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre in July 2018. "I kept something from almost all of them, something that has fascinated me and that has opened me towards new perspectives. However, my core of experimentalist still hasn’t let me «marry» any of them. Equally, this allows me to maintain an objective distance and freedom in establishing my own sets of rules" – explains this composer published by the MIC.PT.

Beyond Music – Memories and Affections is the title of the programme con-ceived by Cândido Lima – composer published by the MIC.PT – in the con-text of the 2nd edition of the CriaSons Festival. “Among the endless possibilities of joining works in a concert, I’ve decided to unite pieces and authors reflecting the affec-tions and the memories, which throughout my life have enriched me as a person and as a musician. So the title is exactly this – a panorama of all the affections and mem-ories surrounding our existence” – reveals Cândido Lima in the programme note of this concert, taking place on January 14 at the Foz Palace in Lisbon. This repertoire, performed by an ensemble of eight musicians directed by Brian MacKay, includes works by Fernando Valente, António de Sousa Dias, Pascal Dusapin, Ângela Lopes, Iannis Xenakis, Camila Menino and Cândido Lima.

Three pieces by Paulo Bastos – composer pub-lished by the MIC.PT – are included in the program-me of the concert by the musicians from the University of Minho, which will take place on January 26 at the Nogueira da Silva Museum in Braga; the pieces are: Baritnok (2012) for baritone saxophone, Bebop it! (2014)
for alto saxophone and Like a bandoneón (2012) for saxo-phone quartet. Although a great part of Paulo Bastos’ work is focused on chamber music and music for children, it also includes a number of orchestral, solo, and electroacoustic pieces. Various of the premiere performances, recordings as well as dedications and commissions of his music, have been destined to renowned musicians.

Between January 21 and 28 Jaime Reis, composer published by the MIC.PT, will be realizing an Artistic Residency at the ZKM – Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe (Germany). The objective of the residency is the composition of a new work for the Aleph guitar quartet, a German ensemble dedicated to the performance of the music by 20th and 21st century composers. “It is neces-sary that learning is continuous in some form, throughout one’s life. What fascinates me is not the idea to know that I can do anything, but rather the idea to know that that I still don’t know what I will be able to do. My work with elec-tronics has favoured this approach” – says Jaime Reis in the interview given to the MIC.PT in October 2016.

Peixinho é Fixe (2) is the title of the concerts by the GMCL – Lisbon Con-temporary Music Group conducted by Diogo Costa, which will be taking place on January 24 and 25, respectively, in Viana do Castelo and at the National Museum of Music in Lisbon. The programme of these performances includes six works by Jorge Peixinho – composer published by the MIC.PT: Deux Pièces Meublées (1988), Llanto por Mariana (1986), Ciclo-Valsa II a (1985), Sine Nomine (1987), Welkom (1972) and Remake (1983 / 85). Jorge Peixinho (1940-95), founder of the GMCL in collaboration with other Portuguese musi-cians – including the harpist and composer published by the MIC.PT, Clotilde Rosa –, was one of the predecessors when it comes to introducing in Portugal the aesthetics of the 20th century musical avant-garde. “Jorge Peixinho always presented a firm and tenacious will to transform the musical environment around him, even when the circum-stances and the results were being adverse" – wrote Paulo de Assis in the introduction to the book Jorge Peixinho. Escritos e Entrevistas (Porto / Lisbon, 2010).

With the work Agrypnia (2018) for orchestra, Nuno Peixoto de Pinho has won the 1st Prize at the 2nd edition of the Francisco Martins Composition Competition, organized by the Orquestra Clássica do Centro (OCC). The jury of this competition, constituted by Luís Tinoco, Sérgio Azevedo, Dimitris Andrikopoulos and Jan Wierzba (chief conductor at the OCC), has also decided to give two honorary mentions to Diogo Novo Carvalho and Gerson de Sousa Batista.
“I believe” – says Nuno Peixoto de Pinho, composer pub-lished by the MIC.PT – “that a musical discourse is not constructed over itself, but it is elaborated in light of one or other works and through the involvement with them (…).
In other words, the «influencing» works pervade, cross and condition the discourse of the I; and thus the principle of «Dialogism», belonging to the literary current of the Rus-sian formalist Mikhail Bakhtin, is born” (from the programme note for the work Ysin, Palabras habla, sent to the MIC.PT on the occasion of the Música Hoje radio programme [broadcast on February 15, 2014, Antena 2]).

The Entre Madeiras Trio, with the support of the RDP – Antena 2, Belém Arts Centre (CCB), AVA – Musical Editions, the Lis-bon Municipality, Glosas, Centro Nacional de Cultura and D. Caeiro Lda., announced in the end of the 2018 the 1st International Entre Madeiras Trio Composition Competition – Clotilde Rosa Award. The competition is organized to pay tribute to Clotilde Rosa (1930-2017), composer published by the MIC.PT. It is directed to composers of any national-ity and age. The submitted works must be unpublished and written for wind trio without electronics, lasting between 8 and 15 minutes. The competition’s jury is constituted by Sérgio Azevedo (president), Jorge Machado and members of the Entre Madeiras Trio (Miriam Tallette Cardoso, Filipe Pereira Branco, João Andrade Nunes). The deadline for the submission of compositions is April 5, 2019.

Two composers published by the MIC.PT – Carlos Caires and Fernando C. Lapa – are in the jury of the Accordion Composition Prize 2019, whose President in the composer and accordionist Paulo Jorge Ferreira. Organized by the FOLEFEST Association and the INATEL Foundation, the objective of the 3rd edition of this Competition is to promote and encourage the contem-porary classical music creation for accordion, contributing for the quantitive and qualitative development of the respective repertoire. This Prize is directed to Portuguese composers, and the ones residing in Portugal, without age limits. The submitted composition must be unpublished, and the Competition is entitled to organize and realize the premiere performances of the awarded works. The dead-line for the submission of pieces is April 26, 2019.

The Art’s Birthday 2019 – Euroradio Ars Acustica Special Evening with direct radio broadcast from various countries – will take place on January 17. In Portugal the evening will be broadcast from the Miso Music Portugal (O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon), on the Antena 2 and for the European Broadcasting Union. The event’s programme includes works for ensemble with or without electronics by five composers published by the MIC.PT: Asper (2016) by Ricardo Ribeiro, Gárgulas d’Arga (2013) by Ângela Lopes, Variações sobre Glosa (2014) by António de Sousa Dias, Equilíbrio (2017) by Gonçalo Gato and Sonderart des Kreisens II (2018) by [ka'mi] (world premiere). The music will be performed by the Sond'Ar-te Electric Ensemble conducted by Pedro Carneiro. The Art’s Birthday is a celebration in homage to the French artist Robert Filliou who on January 17, 1963 declared that Art had been born exactly 1.000.000 before, when somebody had dropped a dry sponge into a bucket
of water.

Works by two composers published by the MIC.PT – Nuno e os Monstros (2008) by Isabel Soveral with text by Ágata Mandillo and A Ilha (2014) by Rui Penha with text by João Gomes de Abreu and Yara Kono – are included in the performances of the Sound Told Fairy Tales, taking place on January 21-24 and 26 at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon. This programme also includes four more pieces: Plop! (2006) with music by Isabel Pires and story by Ana de Castro Guimarães, O Pastorinho e a Flauta (2014) with music by Carlos Guedes (traditional tale), A Velha e o Ladrão (2008) with music by Sérgio Pelágio and story by António Torrado, as well as O pássaro da cabeça (2015) with music by Joana Sá to the poem by Gonçalo M. Tavares. These performances include the participation of Ana Baptista, Francisco Sales and Miguel Azguime as narrators, with the sound projection realized by André Hencleeday, Paula Azguime and Miguel Azguime. The Sound Told Fairy Tales project – directed to young audiences and created by the Miso Music Portugal to give continuation to the old and disappearing tradition of storytelling – offers an innovative and enriched way of telling and listening to a story, with the sonic layer suggesting and complementing the semantic meaning of the words.

Tendencies in Portuguese Contemporary Chamber Music is the theme of the 2nd edition of the CriaSons Festival, whose first concert – Atmosferas (Atmospheres), with the programme conceived by Fernando C. Lapa – took place on December 10 at the Foz Palace in Lisbon. The second concert in the context of this project organized by the Musicamera Productions, will take place on January 14 at the same venue. This time the artist responsible for the conception of the programme entitled Para além da música – memórias e afectos (Beyond Music – Memories and Affections) is Cândido Lima. Apart from the music by this composer published by the MIC.PT, this repertoire also includes the premiere of Primevo (2018) by Camila Salomé Menino, pieces by the two other composers published by the MIC.PT: António de Sousa Dias (Cinco Circunstâncias) and Ângela Lopes (Duas Cantigas de Amigo); as well as the music by Fernando Valente, Pascal Dusapin and Iannis Xenakis.
For its second edition the CriaSons Festival has invited six renowned “resident” composers – Amílcar Vasques-Dias, Fernando C. Lapa, Cândido Lima (composers published by the MIC.PT), Eurico Carrapatoso, Alexandre Delgado and Alejandro Erlich Oliva – responsible for the construction of the six programmes composing the project. Each of them includes a work specially composed for the festival by one of the six “emerging” composers chosen at the CriaSons Competition – Edward Luiz Ayres d'Abreu, Tiago Derriça, Miguel Jesus, Camila Salomé Menino, Samuel Pascoal and Hugo Vasco Reis (composer published by the MIC.PT).

From the beginning of January the MIC.PT has a new Performer’s Page dedicated to Marta Menezes, pianist devoted to the promotion of Portuguese music in Portugal and abroad. Marta Menezes has given premiere performances of various works by Portuguese composers (Sérgio Azevedo, Tiago Cabrita, Tiago Derriça, among others), having developed different projects with this repertoire. As soloist, she has performed with the Orchestre Régional de Cannes, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, the Orquestra de Câmara de Cascais e Oeiras, the Symphony Orchestra of the Music College of Lisbon (ESML), the Camerata MusArt, the Camerata Amicis and the Student Orchestra at the Jacobs School of Music; under conductors such as Nicolas Simon, Pedro Neves, Nikolay Lalov, Vasco Azevedo, Gareguin Aratiounian, Carlos Silva and Louis Lohraseb. In 2013 Marta Menezes completed a Mas-ter of Performance at the Royal College of Music in London, under Dmitri Alexeev and Andrew Ball. As a Doctoral student at the Indiana University – Jacobs School of Music (USA), she studied with Arnaldo Cohen. She is currently based in Por-tugal, finishing her final Doctoral paper: Works for Piano and Orchestra by Portuguese Composers.

Born in Braga, Pedro Lima is in 2019 the new Young Composer-in-Residence at the Casa da Música, which every year selects one Portuguese composer to promote his / her music, making commissions of three works to be premiered by one of the Casa’s resident ensembles and by the chamber group, winner at the Young Musician’s Award in the pre-vious year. Pedro Lima resides in London as fellow at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He studied at the Calouste Gulbenkian Conservatoire of Music in Braga and at the Music College of Lisbon with Luís Tinoco and João Madureira. He has also gained his Master’s Degree in Opera Making & Writing at the Guildhall School. His catalogue of works includes vocal and stage music, works for wind orchestra, symphony orchestra, ans solo pieces. As performer, author and producer, Pedro Lima has been working with the MayoKondor group, a collective of art-ists experimenting with new ways of artistic expression and Virtual Reality as a provocation for a set of eclectic creations.

David Miguel (DMig0004)
Amnis (2010) · orchestra

David Miguel (DMig0005)
Elegia (2006) · cello and piano

David Miguel (DMig0006)
Múltiplos (2005) · piano and electronics