Isabel Vaz - cello

Vasco Dantas - piano

Program:

Fernando Lopes-Graça – Forgotten Page

Anne Vitorino de Almeida – Beyond (World Premiere)

Daniel Bernardes – Sketches Inspired by Camões

André Mehmari – Brazilian Suite

Reading of the poems by Luís Vaz de Camões, translated by Harrie Lemmens.

Reading of the originals by Teresa Pinto.

Isabel Vaz was born in Lisbon and began studying music at four and cello at seven with Luís Estevão da Silva and Maria José Falcão at the Fundação Musical dos Amigos das Crianças. She graduated from the Lisbon University of Music with Clélia Vital and Irene Lima (chamber music). She completed a Master's degree at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam in the class of Dmitry Ferschtman with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Portugal. She had the opportunity to study at HAMU in Prague with Vaclav Bernasek and at the Manhattan School of Music in New York with Alan Stepansky.

She has received awards at various national and international competitions, both as a soloist and for chamber music. In 2006, she was awarded second prize at the Portuguese Young Musicians Prize for the Piano Chamber Music section of the ESML Quintet, and in 2009, first prize with the Quarteto Blanc. In 2012, Isabel Vaz won third prize and the audience award at the Estoril Interpretation Competition (Portugal), and first prize in 2016. From 2013 to 2015, she was a member of the Quartetto Indaco from Milan, and she distinguished herself at several competitions – first prize at the 2013 Guido Papini International Competition, the Jeunesse Musical Deutschland Prize at the Premio Borciano 2014, and third prize at the 2014 Val Tidone International Competition. The Indaco Quartet completed a master's degree in string quartets at the Hochschule für Musik in Hannover with Oliver Wille. During this period the quartet also participated in various international festivals and performed in renowned concert halls across Europe, collaborating with internationally renowned musicians such as Bruno Canino and members of the Quartetto di Cremona.

Vasco Dantas, a Portuguese pianist born in Porto, has received over 50 prizes and awards at international competitions, including the Grand Prix at the Valletta International Piano Competition (Malta), the Special Prix at the International Piano Competition SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem (Morocco), first prize at the International Competition of the City of Vigo (Spain), the International Santa Cecilia Competition and Interpretation Estoril-Lisbon, a Gold Medal of Merit (Municipality of Matosinhos, Portugal), and the Casa da Música e Münster Steinway & Sons Prize (Germany).

After his first performances at Hong Kong City Hall and the Main Hall of the Moscow Tchaikovsky Conservatory in 2019, he made his first solo appearance at Carnegie Hall in New York. He has also performed as a soloist with other orchestras, including the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra (Moscow), the Filarmónica Portuguesa, the Hong Kong Symphonia, the Lisbon Metropolitana, the Sinfónica do Espírito Santo (Brazil), the Porto Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfónica Portuguesa, and the Südwestdeutschlands Kammerorchester (Germany). This has given him the opportunity to work with renowned conductors such as Choi Sown Le, Daniel Cohen, Dinis Sousa, Douglas Bostock, Günter Neuhold, Jan Wierzba, Joshua dos Santos, Martin André, Misha Rachlevsky, Osvaldo Ferreira, Pedro Carneiro, Pedro Neves, Peter Sauerwein, Rui Pinheiro, Vassily Sinaisky, and Victor Hugo Toro. His tours have taken him to numerous prestigious venues across five continents.

Vasco Dantas began playing the piano at the age of four, and two years later, he made his first public appearance on Portuguese radio. In 2000, he was admitted with honors to the Porto Conservatory, where he studied with Rosgard Lingardson. In addition to piano, he also began studying violin. He graduated in Music from the London Royal College of Music, with piano accompanists Dmitri Alexeev and Niel Immelman. He also studied orchestral conducting with Peter Stark and Natalia Luis-Bassa. He holds a Master's degree in Performance and a doctorate in the "Konzertexamen" from the University of Münster, with Heribert Koch as his accompanist. He has been invited to lecture at Boston University, holds a Master's degree in Music Education from the University of Aveiro, and earned the Art of Teaching diploma from the London RCM. Vasco Dantas is regularly invited to teach in masterclasses and at international festivals. He is the artistic director of the Algarve Music Series, a chamber music festival in the Algarve featuring world-class artists. He has recorded CDs at the invitation of Antena 2, ARS Produktion, Coviello Classics, Rádio Galega, MPMP, and KNS Classical. His discography includes five albums: Promenade (2015), Golden Liszt (2016), Freitas Branco|Sonatas (2020 – nominated for Best Classical Album by the Play Awards), Poetic Scenes (2020, nominated by Opus Klassik as Discovery Artist of the Year), and Departure (2021). Vasco receives support from AVA Musical Editions and the AMMFoundation.

More information: Vaz-Dantas

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