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Amílcar Vasques Dias in 2003. Photo by Perseu Mandillo, sourced from the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre - MIC.PT website

Amílcar Vasques-Dias is a Portuguese composer and pianist.

Amílcar Vasques-Dias was born in Badim, Monção. He studied Piano and Composition at the Music Conservatories of Porto and Braga. He was a Fellow of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and of the Secretariat of State for Culture for the Master Degree in Instrumental and Electroacoustic Composition at the Royal Conservatory of The Hague in Holland, where Louis Andriessen, Peter Schat, Jan van Vlijmen and Dick Raaijmakers were his teachers. His work with Karlheinz Stockhausen, in Holland, with Iannis Xenakis, in Aix-en-Provence, France, and with Cândido Lima, in Portugal, was so relevant that it has led him to consider those composers-teachers as the most influential in his formation as a musician and composer. In 1989, he met Fernando Lopes-Graça, to whom he presented the compositions he created in Holland. It is from this interaction that he has begun to give more attention to traditional Portuguese music, manifesting its influence in some of his pieces.

In Holland, he developed an artistic and pedagogical activity as a pianist and composer for 14 years.

As a pianist, he performs his own music and uses improvisation as a means of expression, having performed concerts in Portugal, Spain, Holland, Germany, Belgium, France, Russia, Canada and the United States of America.

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Amilcar Vasques-Dias. Photo sourced from the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre – MIC.PT website.

As a composer, he has received commissions from various Dutch and Portuguese public and private institutions in the field of instrumental and vocal chamber or electroacoustic music, symphony orchestra, brass orchestra, accompanied and a cappella choir, multimedia works, opera, and music for film and for the stage.

Amílcar Vasques-Dias' music has been performed in Portugal and around Europe, as well as in America and Japan, especially at contemporary music festivals.

He has several works recorded on various CDs edited in the Netherlands and in Portugal – some of which are exclusively dedicated to his music.

In parallel with his activity as a composer, he currently has projects to merge classical piano with traditional music, namely with the cante from Alentejo, with Manuel Caldeira and Pedro Calado, singers of the Cantares de Évora Group, and with flamenco music, with the singer Esther Merino.

He met and accompanied José Afonso in 1978, in the Netherlands, and since then has dedicated himself to the study and recreation of his music, having created with the violinist Luís Pacheco Cunha and the singer Esther Merino the project José Afonso: by Ear and Heart.

Amilcar Vasques-Dias. Photo sourced from the Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre – MIC.PT website.

Since his return from the Netherlands in 1988 until 2010, Amílcar Vasques-Dias has been also a lecturer at the Lisbon and Porto Superior Music Schools, at the University of Aveiro and at the University of Évora.

He was the mentor and artistic director of the 20th Century Music Meetings of Alentejo, from 1998 to 2009. Currently, at the invitation of Évora City Council, he is the artistic director of the 20.21 ÉVORA CONTEMPORARY MUSIC Festival.

Discography

  • 1980 - Volharding 003 Orkest De Volharding
  • 1982 - Volharding 004 Orkest De Volharding
  • 1989 - Orkest De Volharding Shoulder to Shoulder
  • 1992 - Trajekten Orkest De Volharding 1972-1992
  • 1998 - Álvaro Teixeira Lopes - José Pereira de Sousa Música Portuguesa Séc. XX
  • 1999 - Nancy Lee Harper Estreia Mundial - Música Portuguesa para Piano
  • 1999 - Concertos d'Água Khora Ensemble
  • 2001 - Música Portuguesa para Flauta e Piano no Séc. XX - Joaquim Galvão / João Luís Rosa
  • 2005 - Amílcar Vasques Dias - Doze Nocturnos em Teu Nome Lume de Chão: Tecido de Memórias e Afectos - Álvaro Teixeira Lopes
  • 2007 - Nancy Lee Harper | Música Portuguesa para piano, Vol. 2
  • 2008 - Luís Pacheco Cunha, Eurico Rosado, Pedro Wallenstein Violino em Portugal
  • 2011 - Festival CriaSons Têndencias da Música de Câmara Portuguesa Contemporânea - Opus Ensemble / Duo Contra Cello / Quarteto Lopes-Graça
  • 2011 - Desnudo - Joana Machado e Amílcar Vasques-Dias
  • 2013 - Canções de Évora - Amílcar Vasques Dias (Cláudia Pereira Pinto, canto; João Lucena e Vale, piano)
  • 2016 - EM CANTE · música do Alentejo (Amílcar Vasques-Dias · piano / Joaquim Soares e Pedro Calado · vozes)
  • 2019 - Travels in My Homeland - Portuguese Piano Music (Vasques-Dias · Lopes-Graça / Joana Gama · piano)

External Links

MIC.PT

Source (text, image and other data): Portuguese Music Research & Information Centre – MIC.PT