Photo: Pedro Lima · © Maria Fontes
Questionnaire / Interview
Part 1 · Roots and Education
· How did music begin for you, and where are your musical roots? ·
Pedro Lima: Music began very early. All the paths pointed in that direction. It was, and is, a dominant art at my family home – for example, my older brother is an incredible pianist. There was always space for informal contexts when my parents took out the guitar to revive the Revolution songbook together with their friends (still today!).
I think that all this made music in my life normal, and frankly, I don’t remember it not being there. I got into the conservatory early to study Clarinet and all the other traditional disciplines, but I confess that I have never been a ‘predestined’ student. Instead, the opposite, I intuitively aimed to diversify the commitment to various branches of music – from progressive rock bands to DJ experiences. Only after, in late adolescence, I understood that my profession could end up here and that creating was inseparable from what I wanted to be.
· Which paths led you to composition? ·
PL: I have always preferred to search instead of reproducing. Whether on clarinet, piano, percussion or computer, there has always been a creative impulse to discover what wasn’t in the score. Paulo Bastos appeared in my life – when I was about 12 or 13 – he brought pieces and sounds I had never heard before. I regret that not all children and teenagers had and have the proper privilege to hear György Kurtág, Johann Sebastian Bach, António Pinho Vargas, Steve Reich, or Luís Tinoco in a phase when one forms the taste which is not limited by typical prejudices later perpetuating in adulthood. One of this music’s characteristics was its extreme didacticism, and there’s no reason to disregard it in the face of so many other classics. In any case, I rejoice and am thankful for the privilege of having been so lucky in the phase determining the formation so much. Paulo planted indestructible seeds, which thickened my taste for creation and research, so it was natural that I made the decision to follow him in college in the Composition course, something that only gave me greater certainty about how much I wanted to follow this path.
· Which moments from your music education do you presently find the most important? ·
PL: I think the moments are – entering the Conservatory and studying with Paulo Bastos, in Braga, and with Luís Tinoco in Lisbon, and going to London when I was still very young and when my music was in a phase of a very intense self-discovery. Having the pieces performed from an early stage was also preponderant in trying out different things and understanding how essential the relationship with the musicians during rehearsals is. It makes all the difference. All this has probably weighed and shaped my style in a certain way, but, at the same time, I feel that the composer almost constantly exists in an ‘education’ shelter. There’s a requirement for an update, research, and awareness of what happens and what one creates. If we don’t do it, there is the threat of making a mistake and thinking that we write the best piece in the world or the best chord in history.
Part 2 · Influences and Aesthetics
· Which past and contemporary references are present in your music practice? ·
PL: Osmosis in the context of music creation is a perpetually continuous process, and it happens in such a way that we are constantly quoting and recreating ideas from other creators and ourselves. We know that it occurs voluntarily and involuntarily, and I have never had any difficulty acknowledging that it is an integral part of my process. Many composers and music practices have always influenced my language. There are also many genres tendentially oblivious to the classical sphere, which I absorb into my music. I am eclectic in an endless renovation, and I realise that the context creates the pertinence.
· What can a music discourse express and mean, in your understanding? ·
PL: It can mean almost anything. I don’t see limits in the association and extrapolation one can make from a musical note. Music exists in an abstract dimension, and for this very reason, one can give it all the meanings. If one works with a text or video, for example, it changes drastically, but regarding instrumental music, I think there’s a vast territory of associations one can make. Music is an artistic expression with a vocabulary of its own. I believe that in civilization’s human evolution, we have used it to express matters, feelings, reactions and doubts for which the words alone would fall short.
· Are there any extra-musical sources that influence your work in a significant way? ·
PL: Without any doubt, they exist and are essential. The processes we absorb from other art forms, such as cinema, literature and painting, are excellent sources to confront our music creation process. There’s even a specific standardised routine in the way I use non-musical creations so that they provide some ‘inspiration’ for my music. There’s also a tendency in how images and poetry are nutritious elements and active provocations for the soundscapes I emancipate in my imagination. Still, it’s nothing new. The way Mark Rothko painted and generated texture in his works clearly parallels how György Ligeti orchestrated and propagated microcells in his orchestral and choral works. The analogies are countless, and it is only beneficial for the art to broaden its limits.
· In the context of Western art music, do you feel close to any school or aesthetics from the past or the present? ·
PL: I feel close to various. Practically all the Western music history periods reveal transforming novelties regarding how and why one creates. I have never stopped feeling close to danceable forms from the baroque period or the American and European minimalism, for example. There are different degrees of contagion, some more transparent than others. Still, my ear and my ‘musical personality’ have always been shaped in this context, so there’s a sensation of indispensable proximity. In recent years, the generation of active English composers from the end of the 20th and the beginning of the 21st centuries – Anderson, Benjamin, Adès, Turnage – will have been determining how I have built some of my means. Simultaneously, György Ligeti’s experience, particularly at the end of his career when he revisited his path in the light of effervescent sensitivity, was essential in the search for musical fluidity.
· Are there any influences of non-Western cultures in your music? ·
PL: There are, and even though I can’t highlight them instantaneously, this question is perfect to begin this reflection. The Western frame is the most dominant in our academy and, consequently, in our concert halls. Nowadays, we are closer to the world because a significant part of it is genuinely encapsulated for future discovery through the objects we keep in our pockets. Recently, I have developed an increasing fascination for the music of the renowned Japanese composer Tōru Takemitsu. Somebody who knows Takemitsu’s music will quickly point towards the fact that not on rare occasions he crossed paths with the West as well as essential figures and prevailing currents in the second half of the 20th-century space – it’s true. However, far beyond that, the multiple manifestations of his Japanese identity are evident in practically all the music he wrote, and, paradoxically, it makes me feel at home. One can say the same about this positive avalanche of South Korean culture, which has reached the Western storefronts. From K-pop, which means little or nothing to me, up to cinema achievements such as Bong Joon Ho’s “Parasite” (2019) and Celine Song’s “Past Lives” (2024), the two latter references, among others. There’s a surrealist, political, disturbing and provocative manifestation in these stories, and I like to think that my music lets itself be contaminated by these art forms.
· What does ‘avant-garde’ mean to you, and what presently can be considered ‘avant-garde’? ·
PL: Perhaps through the association with certain stylistic currents, ‘avant-garde’ is not such an ‘avant-garde’ word in today’s eyes. Evidently, when I think about the etymology of the word the meaning turns out to be obvious: something that is ‘in front’ of any other thing. When I think about the artistic and musical context, I inevitably mean the first half of the 20th century, France, Germany and a series of currents which branched out from this ‘contemporary artistic centre’. Today, at least for me, the notion of ‘avant-garde’ seems more challenging to frame in a context. Maybe it’s a word that, to be able to exist, depends on a future time; perhaps only decades from now, we will know what today’s avant-garde is. I don’t know.
Part 3 · Language and Music Practice
· Characterise your music language from the perspective of the techniques / aesthetics developed in 20th and 21st-century music creation, considering your personal experience and path to this point. ·
PL: I can perhaps frame my music language in a ‘super expanded neo-modalism with the gravest identity crises’. Now, seriously, in my musical identity, there has always been a notion of tonality and an almost umbilical relationship with harmony. There’s a fascination with the depth of an orchestra, perhaps due to the love-hatred relationship with spectralism and with the music of György Ligeti, Luciano Berio and Igor Stravinsky. Regarding the latter ones, the relationship’s manifest is only love. Mentioning names is always dangerous, but it is also efficient in creating a clearer idea about what we think.
There’s also aesthetic proximity with a ‘British music’ line founded in Oliver Knussen – a great pedagogue, somewhat unknown, I would say – George Benjamin, Julian Anderson, and Thomas Adès. To mention this generation also means inevitably mentioning Olivier Messiaen and the phenomenon of ‘resonance’ as a musical gesture. Then there’s the opera, where I find many fascinating and repulsive things (clearly, an exaggerated term). Thinking of Claudio Monteverdi and rediscovering him today is a marvellous thing – simplicity in poetic ebullition. I also think of Philip Venables and about what the opera can be today – the music creation for Sarah Kane’s “4.48 Psychosis” is fascinating and a fantastic statement of freedom we possess to think and create opera today.
In another prism, Luís Tinoco’s music and precise way of writing for voices has always been a timeless inspiration. Regarding Luís, I need to evoke all of his music, as it seems to inherit the colours of jazz in communion with what is the best in the post-modern era. It fascinates me. Then there’s minimalism, which, among many other things, crosses the classical tradition with the ‘ears’ from different places. I consider this genre liberating and a source of validation for many new ideas following Reich, Adams, Glass, Riley and Arvo Pärt.
Lastly, there’s jazz. It is perhaps the last stronghold, but indispensable to describe my music, either from the harmonic side or the improvisation aspect, which continues dominating how I experiment with ideas and manage impulses in ‘real-time’. Although this process is intellectual and has thoughtful reasoning – in other words, it can be changed and rewritten – both impulse and intuition are crucial elements of my modus operandi.
· Do you have a preferred music style or genre? ·
PL: It’s difficult to say. There’s a particular preference for creators more than specific styles. Even this possible preference is occasionally subject to renovation and reorganisation, depending on what one wants to hear in a determined moment. For example, if I compose an ensemble piece, it is very probable that during this time, my favourite genre will be ‘contemporary music for ensemble’. As I think that listening to pieces by other composers is the best way to sophisticate our tastes and ears, I invest in this research that will ultimately lead me to enjoy what I listen to even more.
Regarding this question, I remember a short story from living in London. I was following the production of Donizetti’s opera at the Royal Opera House, “Lucia di Lammermoor”, a classic. The first rehearsals I attended already occurred on the main stage of that magnificent hall, but only with the singers, the accompanying pianist and the conductor (a common practice in setting up a production – scaling the resource input to simplify the process). In the beginning, the music I hadn’t known before seemed somewhat predictable and maybe dull in the face of my irreverent expectations regarding contemporary opera, which I listened to daily with a particular fascination. Until, bit by bit and to my surprise, I began understanding a revealing subtext of the opera’s unquestionable qualities – the harmonic rhythm, the orchestration, the marvellous and exuberant lament arias crossing with a particularly sad, aggressive and moving drama. After two or three rehearsals, the orchestra joined. I contemplated the exponentiation of the material, which I already knew well – from a piano version to a large orchestra, with choir and bells playing offstage and creating a dramatic and disturbing soundscape (the ones that know the opera understand what I’m talking about). Suddenly, I loved Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor” and felt that this opera revealed a freshness and a discursive deepness, frankly avant-garde for the time in question. This experience led me to learn more about Donizetti’s music and understand that he’s a composer I like, particularly in the framework of what he produced. This example strengthens the argument regarding the context and investment in the research. Sometimes, we are agile to refuse ideas we have never experimented with, and, in this sense, the ‘Donizetti experience’ was a pleasant surprise, among many others. For this, we need to be open to new possibilities.
· Regarding your creative practice, do you work on your music starting with an embryo idea or after having elaborated a global form? In other words, do you start with the micro towards the macro form or vice-versa? Please describe this process. ·
PL: Most of the time, I look for the ‘structure’, perhaps because many of my works begin with texts and other extra-musical ideas that naturally already have a structure. However, I recognise that the manifestation of embryo ideas is dominant in how one designs the structure, mainly in purely instrumental pieces without spoken, recorded or sung text. I have already experienced situations where I defined 10 minutes of a piece in the function of four seconds of music I composed, and I am very active in this search. I like to think in the DNA of a determined piece, in the way the elements interconnect and in the times when we deliberately choose to open the door – exceptions – so that other DNAs also emerge almost as ‘strange bodies’ inside a given music creation. One of my professors in England used to talk a lot about ‘rules’ and the way they boost us creatively. I still acknowledge this in what I do today. It’s almost like creating a small game that I will play and allow, as a referee (meta position), to break the rules occasionally to get a different result. Here, I’m already closer to knowing what my desired outcome is.
· How do you determine the relation between the reasoning and the creative impulses or inspiration in your music practice? ·
PL: Without evoking cliché percentages and processes that don’t concern me, I determine there’s a strong inclination towards creative reasoning and, simultaneously, an absorption and a permanent use of any creative impulse that can emerge. It depends on the days and determining factors such as, ‘How much time do I have to finish the piece?’ In any case, the creative process merges different approaches, which are helpful in various process moments. Inspiration as a concept seems to reside outside of us and reaches us due to cosmic friction through references, thoughts, contexts and situations from our lives. Thus, I would say that the best way to nourish the inspiration is to provide it with the maximum number of references, increasing one’s vocabulary so that the paths remain open and available to communicate with us always when necessary and possible.
· What is your relationship with new technologies and how do they influence your music? ·
PL:They influence and represent a facilitating element inside the creative process – either through inspirational provocation or the possibility of accessing discursive elements which otherwise wouldn’t exist. For example, my music gains new vocabulary when made with electronics. I have sounds in my head that can only manifest with this possibility. I don’t have complexes or prejudices and continue to write purely instrumental music. Still, even in this setting, listening to and knowing the intricacies of electronic music gives my ears an enlarged capacity for what one can extract from a so-called ‘conventional’ instrument. The new technologies are an integral part of our civilizational path, and they contemplate how we define ourselves as creators and humans in this context.
· Define the relation between music and science and how the latter may manifest in your music. ·
PL: Music and science are inseparable; although it might not seem at first sight, we know that there’s an intimate relationship, and it isn’t unreasonable to say that one can analyse music in the light of science. When Pythagoras established the numerical ratio of the music intervals, he joined music and science for the first time. Since then, there have been countless examples, and some musical currents have a precise mathematical manifestation – serialism and spectralism are good examples of this approach. It would be then fallacious to say that my music doesn’t intertwine with science. This thesis becomes redundant since music is science in a literal way. Beyond this, when I compose, there’s the logic of experimentation and, consequently, an analysis of the results. Is there a more scientific approach than this one? Composing also means making timbral experiences! Moreover, there’s a logic associated with the acoustics and the physical propagation of the sound resonating in other matters and bodies, and it is how my music becomes ‘alive’. Lastly, there’s a clear philosophical parallel between music and science in describing the course of humanity. As its sister, music represents and points towards a possible direction for a potential future. Thus, it seems that there are more similarities than differences.
· What is the importance of space and timbre in your music? ·
PL: The notion of space is naturally essential in my music, either through the ‘space’ where my music occurs or through the ‘space’ inside the music. For example, I enjoy thinking in space and deepness when I write for orchestra. These concepts translate into orchestration, and we can frequently forget the more practical phenomenon. Still, suppose we imagine a tremendous orchestral fortissimo tutti, followed by a sweet, medium-register, pianissimo, BIGINT note on the clarinet. In that case, we can easily perceive a sui generis notion of the space. In this sense, I enjoy planning and creating on scenarios that summon this dimension for my work.
Regarding the physical space concept where my music occurs, I consistently create music that survives in any place or concert hall. We know it isn’t always easy, and the best examples are various Maurice Ravel’s works… His writing is so detailed and created to the millimetre of perfect execution that a hall with too dry or too reverberating acoustics can be fatal for the ideal listening to his beautiful passages. For this reason, thinking about all these factors is unavoidable. Some months ago, I wrote a piece for the Drumming – Percussion Group presented at the Tibães Monastery in Braga as part of a dance performance with a video entitled “ECHO – a prelude to the story of Narcissus”, a commission by the Companhia Arte Total. The work was a set of various pieces, and the music occurred in the Monastery’s different spaces where one could find extensive percussion sets. The ones familiar with the Drumming know that they have instruments nobody else has in this country. It is a kind of Disneyland Paris for composers… As rehearsals ran, I understood that the music worked very differently in the various places of its performance. The Capítulo Hall, a wooden hall from the 18th century, with a height of 5-6 meters, had a velvety and simultaneously exuberant sound for the marimbas and suspended cymbals. Now, the central corridor with the Monastery’s cells summoned a certain spatialization cut by the absorption of the floor made of pine wood. For a more attentive ear, these phenomena are determining, and, in this sense, I proposed and carried out some alterations to the acoustic reality of each space. Music exists (literally) in space; for a composer, it’s always helpful to foresee and anticipate these contexts.
· Does experimentalism play a significant role in your music? ·
PL: It does, and it doesn’t, depending on the context. There are situations when experimentalism reveals itself as ‘facilitating’ in the wake of the creative process. Experimenting and reacting to experimentation’s results is relatively common in my creative process. However, in the musical dimension, sound, and even writing, I don’t think that this ‘experimental’ side is presently part of my identity.
Part 4 · Portuguese Music
· Try to evaluate the present situation of Portuguese music. ·
PL: This question depends on what we understand as ‘Portuguese music’. Is it the music written by Portuguese composers? Is there a musical identity that excels in this merely geographical logic? At a time, I participated in an interview with the English composer Harrison Birtwistle, and he told a story about his path as a young composer in the 1950s and 1960s. With wit and insight, he shared that as a Composition student, he wanted his music to move away from what he considered ‘20th-century English music’. However, when he started having his music more regularly performed in Europe – outside Great Britain – the music reviews he read in journals tended to refer to his music as ‘clearly English’, emphasising the only thing he had tried not to be. This story puts into perspective the musical identity of a region and a philosophy. In England’s case, I clearly understand what they intend to say with ‘English music’. There’s a historical and academic context, particularly from the 20th century and forward, which marks the music created by composers from that part of the globe with musical ideas likely to be related. I can catalogue orchestration, harmony, and even certain musical gestures as ‘possibly English’.
So far, so good. Things get more complex when we think of a young person like me, born in the modest city of Braga in the 1990s, who goes to London at just over 20, looking for contact with the mentioned British identity. Have I succeeded? Has ‘English music’ contaminated my ‘Portuguese composer’s context? It’s difficult to answer with certainty and making a biographical analysis in this sense is challenging. However, without any doubt, the British line of composers from the last 50 years has been dominating the aspirations I created as a young composer. Today, I find myself a little ahead of this question.
I want to emphasise and put into perspective that we live in a global era today. If, in the 19th century, it was naturally difficult to have contact with the music produced in Nigeria or Los Angeles, nowadays, we’re at the distance of a few simple clicks to make it possible. As composers and creators in the digital era, it seems that all the borders and questions attached to a specific identity stay somewhat in the background within the diverse amplitude of the contemporary world. Still, we have our Portuguese genealogy, but because it is so much smaller compared to other European realities, I have always thought that it wouldn’t have prevailed in creating a doctrine or a particular practice that we could call ‘Portuguese’. We recognise French impressionism’s impact on the music of Luís de Freitas Branco, Joly Braga Santos and even António Fragoso. We also know to which extent Stockhausen and IRCAM influenced Emmanuel Nunes’s music production. I believe these small, great details can define a musical identity more than geography per se.
As for the present state of the music produced by Portuguese composers, I would say that we have never been so good and that today there’s an increasing list of creators who write music of the highest quality, which could sound in any concert hall. It is probably also due to a precious generation that has fought for more and better opportunities and an academic and social context, which allowed contemporary music to gain a particular prominence, quite unlike the deficiencies in the 20th century. Nevertheless, there’s still a lot to do.
· How do you define the composer’s role in the present? ·
PL: A composer is a creator syntonised with the world but with the skill to be absent always when necessary.
A man, a woman, or any other person who, inside their expressive capacity, has the gift of alchemy to infuse their music with an activist and contemplative spirit in the face of beauty, horrors, politics, poetics, everything that exists, and we don’t see among us. Composers are magicians with the power to write in a detailed way the chronological time people decide to hear. They are a paradoxical and constantly unfulfilled beings because the last idea won’t already be worth as much as the next one. But will there be any?
I don’t know if I’m talking about myself or a composer that I know.
· Based on your experience, what are the differences between Portugal’s musical environment and other parts of the world? ·
PL: There are differences in the market and the frequency with which contemporary music takes centre stage in concert halls, radio, television, and public and political attention. We know that today, the Portuguese contemporary music sector has more qualifications than ever. There are performers, conductors, composers, programmers, and art professionals who can do the best that one can find around the world. The opportunities and the visibility don’t correspond with this ‘prime matter’ development. Still, I acknowledge that we are in a transformation cycle, and I believe, with moderate optimism, that our music sector will come to equate with other ones of reference within decades. The main difference resides in the social validation we receive from the ones who don’t understand anything about it. Politics and education are structuring agents that define a shared vision on a determined subject. Despite everything, we are a country with severe literacy problems (of various types), and education still needs to advance so that the results can propagate within other sectors, such as the cultural and musical ones. A considerable percentage of people in Portugal don’t know what ‘a composer’ does. It is a problem, and it has a solution, but it takes time, and one needs long-term investment for the results to transform the context.
Part 5 · Present and Future
· What are your present and future projects? ·
PL: Presently, I am writing two operas for 2025 and 2026 (I love writing operas despite the end being as if I had run a five-month, non-stop marathon), and I will begin writing a piece for an ensemble which will premiere in June 2025, in Portugal. I am also collaborating with some institutions on projects of a more communitarian character, making music for a dance performance entitled “Clementina” and some site-specific space installations. At the same time, recovering from the hangover caused by the early-2024 release of the album “Talkin(g) (A)bout my Generation” (Artway NEXT), I am preparing for the next one, which will be very different and challenging the contemporary music status-quo in the fusion with dance music, in the possibly broadest sense.
· Could you highlight one of your more recent projects and present the context of its creation and the particularities of the language and techniques used? ·
PL: I could highlight the “DANCE SUITE” project, a symphony-orchestra piece I wrote for the Aveiro 2024 New Year’s Concert, coinciding with the inauguration of the Aveiro – National Capital of Culture 2024.
The conductor, Martim Sousa Tavares, received the invitation to conduct and programme this concert to his liking. Smartly, he reflected on the fact that we had entered a reproduction (imitation?) system of a tradition which, by definition, isn’t ours: the waltzes and the polkas performed at the New Year’s Concert in Vienna during the most famous performance broadcast all around the world. At this moment, this repertoire ‘contaminated’ our imagination. Many orchestras and conductors have continued this tradition since, and effectively, there’s nobody who wouldn’t feel good wearing fancy clothes and listening to a Johann Strauss’s waltz. It’s ok. There’s nothing wrong with it. At the same time, Martim pointed out that today, a person who wants to dance doesn’t look for a good waltz or a fantastic polka; instead, on the contrary. These genres crystallized in concert halls; today, it is rare for anybody to dance to them.
Presently, dance music is very different and much more diverse than it has ever been. In the wake of this reflection, I received the proposal to write a piece for orchestra, lasting around 30 minutes, using dance music ‘styles’ from the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. The challenge was already ambitious for somebody like me, and the proposal’s condition not to use ‘electronics’ probably gave a certain bravery to my prompt: ‘Yes, I accept!’. The truth is that despite my classical education, I have always had the space to listen to a lot of electronic music. I greatly value and respect many DJs and producers who have expanded the disco music concept to other fusion levels and, thus, have shaped my ears. However, nobody is made of steel, and when I started working on the piece, I had lots of questions going on in my head. One of them concerned the narrative and the rentability of the material I composed. Some ideas needed a determined time to settle, as is common in disco music, and it created a conflict within my creative authority.
When I write music, my perception unfolds into extreme optics, almost as if there were an instrumentalist performing the music I compose. The problem in this case was quite simple: a lot of repetition! I had a lot of identical music, which made me think about how the musicians would play it all without losing themselves or getting bored in the middle. In search of a solution, I studied the minimal music current tenaciously, trying to unravel how Steve Reich’s and John Adams’s techniques provided the ‘variety’ within a material repeating continuously. Gradually, I found some solutions. I generated significant interest in diverse sections by using orchestration and variations in the music motifs. The output seems particularly efficient in a double sense: firstly, it gives variety to the music material and, simultaneously, generates more interest, allowing the musician to connect with the musical narrative without getting bored or losing focus.
Subsequently, already in a more advanced phase, a doubt appeared: ‘But is this my music?’; ‘Will I be pleased to recognise Pedro Lima’s figure in these sonorities?’. And then I remembered Igor Stravinsky, and I thought about the courage he manifested countless times to reinvent himself within unexpected contexts. “The Rite of Spring” or “Pulcinella” are antitheses of one genius that we still try to understand today. Probably then, I realised that the style wasn’t determining how we can be efficient or successful in a musical incursion. This way, I tried to improve my orchestration using expanded techniques and perfectly unexpected instruments, such as cooking pots or water containers, which could summon a sound identity that wasn’t ‘common’ to the dance music universe. Thus, I created a new paradigm, and suddenly, not only did I write dance music as I knew it. I also reinterpreted it my way. For me, it was a sufficiently exciting exercise.
· How do you see the future of art music? ·
PL: I see it with good spirit, curiosity and enthusiasm. Independently of the context of our existence, one augurs some apprehension regarding various themes and for different reasons, from the climate breakdown to other conflicts that have put on alert our perception of ‘perpetual peace’ or even the inseparable complications of the digital era. There will always be material to encourage creation; music is especially pertinent in adverse contexts.
Imagining that the future could bring challenges, I foresee that in this context, music and art can become even more powerful ‘weapons’ in their undeniable capacity to raise awareness, educate, reflect and maybe cure the wounds that can appear or not. Stephen Hawking used to say, ‘While there is s life, there is hope’. I feel that as BIGINT as there is life, music and art will always exist. They are a fundamental part of our essence, and we won’t be able to renounce something ascribed to our identity, always searching for beauty.
Pedro Lima, July-August, 2024
© MIC.PT
| Pedro Lima · Once Again – Eternal Goodbyes (2015) Portuguese Youth Orchestra, Pedro Carneiro (conductor) Konzerthaus Berlin, Germany, August 12, 2015 |
Pedro Lima · Sopro do Côncavo (2015) Wind Orchestra of the Music Shool of Lisbon, Alberto Roque (conductor) Young Musicians Festival, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, October, 2017 |
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| Pedro Lima · (...) e tu , de mim voaste (2016) Gulbenkian Orchestra, Osvaldo Ferreira (conductor) Young Musicians Festival, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, September 25, 2016 |
Pedro Lima · Talkin(g) (A)bout My Generation (2019) Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, Peter Rundel (conductor) Casa da Música, Porto, November, 2019 |
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| Pedro Lima · Como Se Fosse Um Filho (2023) Sond’Ar-te Trio: Elsa Silva (piano), Vìtor Vieira (violin), Filipe Quaresma (cello) Música Viva Festival 2023, O'culto da Ajuda, Lisbon, May 13, 2023 |
Pedro Lima · Dance Suite (2023) [excerpt _ DANCE V. (funky house grooves wtf?_)] Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras, Martim Sousa Tavares (conductor) Aveirense Theatre, January, 2024 |
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· Pedro Lima · “eleven” (2019) · MAAT Saxophone Quartet · recording: Casa da Música, Porto, October, 2019 · |
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| · Pedro Lima · “Que estás a fazer aqui?” from the project “Opera in Prison – TIME (As We Are)” (2022) · gravação: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, june, 2022 · |
