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BIOGRAPHY

Maria José Souza Guedes

PORTUGAL

Pianist from Oporto, he studied music at Curso Silva Monteiro, under Ernestina Silva Monteiro and Fernanda Wandschneider. He took the final exam of this course with 20 marks. She also finished the Curso Superior de Piano do Conservatório de Música do Porto, with 20 marks.

Simultaneously she graduated in Germanic Philology at the Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto. She holds the First Prize “Varella Cid” and the Gold Medal Silva Monteiro.

BIOGRAPHY

As a scholar of the Gulbenkian Foundation, she continued her piano studies in Vienna with Prof. Hans Graf. Later she studied with Prof. Sequeira Costa, having attended many piano masterclasses with Vlado Perlemuter, Jorg Demus, Carlos Cebro, Sequeira Costa etc., and chamber music masterclasses with Maria João Pires, Augustin Dumay, Aurèle Nicolet, Patrick Gallois, etc.

She has performed more than 400 concerts, solo, with orchestra and chamber music, especially with her husband, the flutist Luís Meireles, in major auditoriums and prestigious festivals in Portugal (including Azores and Madeira), Spain (including Gran Canaria), Sweden, Poland, Romania, Greece, Slovakia, Hungary, Germany, Finland, Czech Republic, Austria, Italy (including Sardinia and Sicily), Belgium, Switzerland, France, Russia (including Siberia), Macedonia, Slovenia, Serbia, Croatia, Norway, Montenegro, USA, Cuba and Singapore.

Besides her husband, she has played in Portugal and abroad, in various formations, with musicians of great quality and renown, such as Adam Wierzba (clarinet), Vadim Brodsky, Aiman Mussakhadjeva, Pedro Meireles, Yomino Toyoda Friedman Eichorn and Jozef Kolinek, (violin), Piotr Nowicki , David Wyn LLoyd and Richard Woycicki (viola), Alexander Huhlshoff, Erich Oscar Huetter and Zbigniew Krzeminski, (cello), Massimo Mercelli and Giuseppe Nova, (flute), among others.

He has been soloist with the Symphonic Orchestras of Porto and Lisbon, the Classical Orchestra and the National Orchestra of Porto, the Ensemble of Porto, the Szczecin Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra of Silesia, and the National Chamber Orchestra of Kazakhstan.

He has recorded seven CDs, three solo and four in duo, which have received excellent critical acclaim.

Several works were dedicated to him, namely by the composer Fernando C. Lapa, who premiered in first absolute audition: Plural III for clarinet and piano (1993), Variações sobre o Coro da Primavera for piano solo (2000), Duplo Concerto for flute, piano and string orchestra (2002), O Milagre do Amanhecer (2008), for piano and 4 Versos de Olhar Suspenso, for piano and flute (2012) He was a jury member of several national and international competitions, in Spain, Macedonia, Italy, Russia and Portugal.

He has directed several masterclass courses in Portugal and France.

She has been a teacher at the Conservatório de Música do Porto since 1982, after winning the respective public competition. Many of her students have regularly won prizes in national and international competitions.