On Miso Ensemble’s 40th anniversary, we dedicate this In Focus feature to the duo formed by Miguel Azguime and Paula Azguime. The ensemble debuted in 1985 and continues to shape contemporary musical creation. Miso Ensemble has traversed Portuguese musical life from its inception to today as a unique project. It left a lasting impression in the 1980s and 1990s with its musical originality and original performative approach. In the 21st century, they evolved through their scenographic-musical performances, maintaining exceptional creative strength. The ensemble gave rise to Miso Music Portugal, a cultural association that has played a crucial role in fostering musical creation and promoting contemporary music. These four decades have been marked by intense dedication to music creation in Portugal, always with an eye on the global stage. The ensemble has promoted composition, commissioned works, brought together performers, and recorded and published musical pieces while continuing to reinvent itself artistically. The Miso Ensemble has always placed music at the centre of its innovative pursuits, celebrating 40 years of creative freedom and passion for new music, which we highlight in this In Focus feature.

The opera As Sombras de uma Azinheira by Amílcar Vasques-Dias (a composer published by the MIC.PT) will premiere on April 25, Freedom Day in Portugal. The title alludes to one of the songs most associated with the Carnation Revolution, drawing inspiration from Álvaro Laborinho Lúcio’s homonymous book. The opera tells the story of Catarina, who was born precisely on April 25, 1974, and “does not like her name or the celebration of her birthday, as she has her idea of what freedom is”, says the composer in the programme note. The commissioner of this work for string quintet, speaker and soloists is the Ritornello Associação Cultural (with support by the DGArtes). It will be performed by the Contemporary String Quintet, with Manuel Rocha as speaker/ radio host, Tânia Ralha (soprano) and André Henriques (baritone). The author of the libretto is Eduarda Freitas, and Mário João Alves is responsible for the staging. The premiere will occur at the Convento de São Francisco in Coimbra, followed by performances in Évora, Amarante, and Oliveira do Bairro.

On March 11, at the Maestro Frederico de Freitas Auditorium of the Portuguese Authors Society (SPA) in Lisbon, the composer António Pinho Vargas (published by the MIC.PT) received the Pedro Osório Prize 2025 for the album Lamentos. Released by Artway Next in 2023, the CD features three of his works – Sinfonia (Subjetiva) (2019), Concerto for Viola and Orchestra (2016), and Concerto for Violin (2016) – performed by the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, Joana Cipriano (viola), Ana Pereira (violin), and Pedro Neves (conductor). Since 2011, the SPA Pedro Osório Prize has recognised an author and a body of work in any musical field, aiming to promote Portuguese music and pay tribute to Pedro Osório. Additionally, Álvaro Teixeira Lopes (piano) and Francisco Berény Domingues (guitar) will perform four António Pinho Vargas’ pieces – Uma já Antiga, Brinquedos, Dança dos Pássaros, Casa de Granito no Minho e Quedas d’água (com lágrimas) – at a concert on April 22 at the Grão Vasco Museum (Viseu International Spring Music Festival).

In April, Ângela da Ponte (a composer published by MIC.PT) will have two of her works performed in Portugal. The first, Punto di fuga (2024), for flute, clarinet, percussion, violin, viola, cello, and harp, is part of the concerts by the Lisbon Contemporary Music Group, conducted by Cláudio Ferreira. They will occur on April 9 and 10 at the Templo da Poesia (Oeiras) and during the 18th International Spring Music Festival in Viseu. The other work, Ensaios Sobre Cantos IV (2019) for adufe and electronics, will be performed on April 4 and 26, at the Casa da Música Jorge Peixinhi (Montijo) and the Casa da Música in Porto, within the Nativo project, where Tiago Manuel Soares gives a solo performance, placing Portuguese traditional percussion at the heart of the narrative. Alongside Ângela da Ponte’s work, the percussionist will also perform pieces by Fernando C. Lapa and Filipe Fernandes.

On April 5, Marthiya de Abdel Hamid by Carlos Alberto Augusto (a composer published by the MIC.PT), based on the text by Alberto Pimenta, will premiere at the Teatro da Rainha in Caldas da Rainha. This performance is part of the company’s 40th-anniversary celebrations, which include a programme titled Pimentíadas, dedicated to the writer Alberto Pimenta. As Carlos Alberto Augusto explains: “This text has resonated within my spirit ever since I acquired the book in a 2005 edition. Reading it sparked, as only a few other texts have done, a ‘sonorous’ interpretation and a desire to externalise this internal reading of mine. Something resonated during the reading. The concept I envisioned is now being presented publicly for the first time: the text, the voice, and an electronic voice-processing system operated in real time. I wonder: can we write with sound?”

The sound installation Afluente by Diogo Alvim (a composer published by the MIC.PT) will be open to the public between April 13 and October 13 in Japan. It is a 10-channel installation at the entrance to the Portuguese Pavilion at the Osaka 2025 Universal Exhibition. The composition aims to transform the waiting time for visitors at the entrance, exploring the relationship between the architecture of Kengo Kuma, responsible for designing the Portuguese Pavilion for Expo 2025, and the theme of the oceans. ‘As an architect, I’ve always been sensible to the questions of space and architecture, which are dimensions affecting the timbre, dynamics, and other listening phenomenona. We’re transdisciplinary by nature, and architecture proves it as we accomplish multiple and complex perceptive experiences. For this reason, I’m interested in the extra-disciplinary approach as a method of deconstruction and reconfiguring the limits between the disciplines in search of our total and complex perception’, shared Diogo Alvim in an interview with the MIC.PT in February 2020. Afluente is based on different sound manifestations of water and string instruments whose timbres evoke the different cultural identities of Japan and Portugal.

In April, the composer Fernando C. Lapa (published by the MIC.PT) will have an intense concert programme. On April 4, his percussion work Margato Son will have its presentation at the Casa da Música Jorge Peixinho (Montijo), within Tiago Soares’ Nativo project, also with pieces by Ângela da Ponte and Filipe Fernandes. The concert will repeat on April 26 at the Casa da Música (Porto). On the 5th, the Casa das Artes in Vila Nova de Famalicão will host AURORA – ópera para uma epopeia dos tempos modernos, composed in collaboration with Tomás and Telmo Marques and with Eduarda Freitas’ libretto. With Raquel Couto as conductor, staging by Nuno M. Cardoso, the performance will be by the Lira Choir, Sara Braga Simões and Job Tomé (soloists), and an instrumental ensemble. On April 14, the AMASING Orchestra will perform the works Canções de Luz e de Mistério and De Azul at the Viriato Theatre in Viseu, with Eliseu Silva (violin), Monika Streitová (flute) and Luciano Pereira (conductor). On the 25th, at the Templo do Senhor Bom Jesus da Cruz (Barcelos), Rodrigo Teixeira will perform Variações sobre o Coro da Primavera de José Afonso, at a concert Miguel Leite’s commentaries (part of the Barcelos Fest Ensemble).

The videodance Through Ashes We Rise (2024), an audiovisual piece that is part of a series of collaborations that João Castro Pinto (a composer published by the MIC.PT) has been developing since 2021 with American choreographer and former dancer Mimi Garrard, will be screened as part of the DARK AND LIGHT event at the Rubin Museum of Art on April 26 in New York City (USA). Organised by the Mimi Garrard Dance Theatre Company, this event will feature the presentation of four additional video dance works, created in collaboration with composers Jonathan Melville Pratt, Tom Hamilton, James Seawright, and Mimi Garrard herself, and performed by dancers Samuel Roberts, Evan Copeland, Michael Francis, Cynthia Koppe, Kate Jewett, and Tim Bendernagel.

The work, Silêncio! Nossa Senhora da Trovoada (2024) by José Carlos Sousa (a composer published by MIC.PT), written for a quintet (violin, cello, clarinet, harp, and piano), is part of the concerts presented by GMCL – Lisbon Contemporary Music Group. Conducted by Cláudio Ferreira, these performances will occur on April 9 and 10, respectively, at the Templo da Poesia (Oeiras), and at the 18th International Spring Music Festival in Viseu. This concert pays tribute to the 85th anniversary of the birth of GMCL’s founder, composer Jorge Peixinho, as well as the centenary of the birth of Luciano Berio. Alongside works by these two prominent 20th-century composers, the programme will feature newly commissioned pieces by contemporary Portuguese composers.

On March 27, 28 and 29, Alberto Pimenta’s Discurso sobre o Filho-da-Puta was performed at Teatro da Rainha (Caldas da Rainha). This Teatro da Rainha production was directed by Fernando Mora Ramos, with musical composition by Miguel Azguime and performed by the Quarteto de Cordas Vocais (Beatriz Antunes, Fábio Costa, Marta Taveira, and Nuno Machado). “This play is a grammatically impeccable, rigorous cry for true freedom and against prejudice and the hypocritical nepotistic favouritism that continues to shape our ways of socialising, always riddled with power ambitions and power struggles”, explain the creators. The performances are part of the Pimentíada cycle, organised to celebrate the 40th anniversary of Teatro da Rainha, which began on World Theatre Day, March 27. Described by the organisers as “focused on the work of Alberto Pimenta, our great classical-contemporary author and performer”, the Pimentíada will run until April 5. They further described it as “an explosive celebration that aims to disrupt the routine nature of commemorations.”

The performance of two works by Pedro Rebelo (a composer published by the MIC.PT) will occur in April. On the 3rd, the Hard Rain Soloist Ensemble will present Crana (2024), a piece for flute, clarinet, piano, violin, and cello, at a concert entitled Surround Sounds: Irish Forests, Rivers & Peatlands. The performance will occur at the Kevin Barry Recital Room of the National Concert Hall in Dublin, the capital of Ireland. Then, Music by Ravel (2025) will premiere in the context of the Quatuor Béla’s tour in Northern Ireland from April 3 to 6. This piece is part of a series that includes Music by Strings (2019), Music by Wind (2020), and Music by Wood (2021). Music by Ravel is entirely based on Ravel’s only string quartet, written in 1903. In this work, Pedro Rebelo reuses the materials of the String Quartet in F Major in a manner of hip-hop sampling, particularly the techniques used by J Dilla. The sampling technique, consisting of extruding short fragments and applying repetition, transposition, and truncation, is here conducted on the notation and not on the audio material.

The MIC.PT activated a new Performer Page dedicated to Rita Castro Blanco in March. The young conductress has a remarkable career in which she has worked with the Staatstheater Darmstadt, the Real Filarmonia de Galicia, the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, among others. Rita Castro Blanco is active in various areas of music, with a particular interest in contemporary music and opera. In this context, it is worth highlighting her participation in Operafest Lisboa 2020, where she conducted the premiere of seven Portuguese operas in the gardens of the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon. The conductress began her orchestral conducting studies at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra and then continued her training at the Royal Northern College of Music. She is currently Assistant Conductor of the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, a position she has held for the second consecutive season. She works regularly with Nuno Coelho, Joana Carneiro and Clark Rundell.

In March, the Espaço Crítica para a Nova Música published a new text (in Portuguese) by Pedro M. Santos – New Vintage: uma referência incontornável na música contemporânea para quarteto de clarinetes. In this review the author writes about the most recent CD by the Vintage Quartet (with Iva Barbosa, João Moreira, José Eduardo Gomes e Ricardo Alves on the clarinets), entitled New Vintage. It includes music by six Portuguese contemporary composers: Ana Seara, Carlos Azevedo, Carlos Lopes, Nuno Peixoto de Pinho, Rodrigo Cardoso and Vítor Faria.

The Lajes do Pico Municipality and the Lajes do Pico Choral Group, in partnership with the Portuguese Music Research and Information Centre – MIC.PT promote the 5th Manuel Emílio Porto National Composition Prize. Manuel Emílio Porto was a fundamental and artistically extraordinary figure in the musical and choral universe of the Azores. In this sense, the Lajes do Pico Municipality has taken the initiative to organise this competition to encourage the creation of new works for the choir and, simultaneously, to valorise Portuguese language. The competition is directed at Portuguese composers who reside or do not reside in Portugal and foreign composers who have resided in Portugal for more than two years. There are two categories, Mixed Choir and White Voices, and the jury is composed of Christopher Bochmann, Jorge Matta, and Hildeberto Peixoto. The deadline for submitting works is April 6, 2025.

The applications for the 8th edition of the Accordion Composition Prize, an initiative by the Folefest Association, are open until July 18. This competition aims to promote and encourage contemporary classical music creation for accordion, contributing to this repertoire’s qualitative and quantitative development. The Prize’s dedicatees are Portuguese composers, or those residing in Portugal, of any age. The application works (for accordion solo or accordion with electronica) must be unedited. The prize’s organisers reserve the right to realise the premieres of the awarded works. The prize’s jury comprises Amílcar Vasques-Dias (composer), Ângela da Ponte (composer) and Paulo Jorge Ferreira (accordionist/ composer and jury president).

With the aim to encourage the creation and diffusion of new acousmatic/ electroacoustic works, Miso Music Portugal promotes and organises the 26th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition – Música Viva 2025. The deadline for the works’ submission is July 31, 2025 (11h59 p.m., Lisbon time) and the results will be announced on October 31, 2025. The presentation of the winning work, diffused via the Miso Music Portugal’s Loudspeaker Orchestra, will occur in December, 2025, in the context of the Short Circuit Festival in Lisbon. The jury of the 26th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition – Música Viva 2025 comprises Hans Tutschku, Manuella Blackburn and Miguel Azguime.

In November the MIC.PT published on the YouTube Channel two new In the 1st Person Interviews (in Portuguese) with the composers Diogo da Costa Ferreira and Luís Neto da Costa. The musicologist and journalist Pedro Boléo conducted these two interviews recorded in 2023 at the O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon.
Presently the MIC.PT YouTube Channel contains 35 New Interviews to composers residing in Portugal, realised since 2019; as well as eight Interviews from the MIC.PT Archive, realised between 2003 and 2005.
The New Interviews, conducted by Pedro Boléo, were filmed at the O'culto da Ajuda in Lisbon and realised in the context of the In the 1st Person cycle of the Music Today and Research & Invention Music radio broadcasts, produced by the MIC.PT and Miso Music Portugal for the Antena 2. They constitute a (re)visit to the creative universe of various composers published by the MIC.PT, following the Historical Interviews recorded by the MIC.PT almost 15 years ago. Today they are unique registers of the artistic evolution of each interviewed composer.
In order to access the Interviews (in Portuguese) follow the links below or visit the MIC.PT YouTube Channel.