BIOGRAPHY
Paulo Oliveira
PORTUGAL
Born in 1979 in Vila do Conde (Portugal), Paulo Oliveira is one of the most sought-after Portuguese pianists of his generation. He began his musical studies at the age of nine with Joaquim Bento. He then entered the Academia de Música de São Pio X with a grant from the Dr. Elias de Aguiar Foundation. In this school he studied with Margarida Almeida and Felipe Silvestre and graduated with honors in 1998. He later studied with Tania Achot, completing his Bachelor of Arts degree in Piano Performance at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.
BIOGRAPHY
Paulo Oliveira continued his studies with Sequeira Costa at the University of Kansas, with whom he studied for nearly a decade, thus benefitting from the knowledge his master received directly from Vianna da Motta, Mark Hamburg, Edwin Fischer, Marguerite Long and Jacques Février. He finished his Master’s degree in 2005, with a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. Later, in 2009, he concluded his Doctor of Musical Arts with honors with the sponsorship of the Portuguese government – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.
Among his most relevant teachers and mentors were Helena Sá e Costa, Luiz de Moura Castro, Andrei Diev, Vladimir Viardo, Vitaly Margulis, Aldo Ciccolini, Paul Badura-Skoda and Dmitri Bashkirov.
Paulo Oliveira has been awarded several prizes in national and international competitions, including the Vianna da Motta International Piano Competition, the 1st prize at the Bártok-Kabalevsky-Prokofiev International Piano Competition, the 2nd prize at the Estoril Competition|El Corte Inglés Prize and the 1st prize at the 2010 Young Artists Festival|Chopin Prize organized by the Metropolitan Orchestra of Lisbon. He was also the winner of the Kansas University Symphony Orchestra Concerto Competition. His duo with cellist Teresa Valente Pereira was awarded after a recital in Barcelona’s Palau de la Música Catalana.
Paulo Oliveira has performed solo, chamber and orchestral concerts in many European countries as well as in North and South America and has recorded for RPD Antena 2, Radio France and Catalunya Radio. He appeared as a soloist with the Kansas University Symphony Orchestra, the Espinho Classical Orchestra, Algarve Orchestra, North Orchestra, Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra, and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra, collaborating with such conductors as Nicholas Uljanov, Steven McDonald, Pedro Neves, Jean-Marc Burfin, Ferreira Lobo, Cesário Costa, and Daniel Klajner.
Paulo combines his concert career with a dedicated teaching activity. He taught at Lisbon’s National Conservatory and at the Piaget Institute. He is currently a faculty member of the Santa Cecília Music Academy and of the National Academy of Advanced Orchestral Studies | Metropolitana, both in Lisbon. He has been a judge at several national and international piano competitions, and he is regularly invited to give master classes.
Paulo Oliveira is a board member of the European Piano Teachers Association – EPTA Portugal.
His latest CD Iberian Impressions, released by Odradek Records, received a Global Music Award in the USA, in the Classical Piano category.