João Valpaços

João Valpaços was born in Carrazedo de Montenegro, Chaves, in 1994, and began his musical studies in 2006 at the Escola Profissional de Arte de Mirandela in the cello class of Prof David Cruz and later in the class of Prof Ricardo Ferreira. He completed the course with the highest mark in the final instrument exam. In 2012 he was admitted to the Hoogschool voor de Kunsten Utrecht in the class of Prof Ran Varon. He has been a member and first cellist in various youth orchestras in Portugal and the Netherlands and frequently performs with Orquestra XXI and Orquestra Gulbenkian, working with various conductors such as Lorenzo Viotti, Hannu Lintu, David Afkham, Lev Markiz, Muahi Tang, Lawrence Foster and Karl-Heinz Steffen. During his solo career, in 2011 he won an Honourable Mention at the “13th Santa Cecília Competition” in Porto, in 2013 1st prize in the third category of the “Britten Cello Concours” in Zwolle, Holland, and in 2014 2nd prize in category A of the “16th International Santa Cecília Competition” in Porto. He has performed solo with orchestra in Holland, playing works by Haydn, Concerto in C major and Tchaikovsky, Rococo Variations. He has had the opportunity to take part in masterclasses with Gary Hoffman, Amit Peled, Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Marc Coppey, Matt Haimovitz, Lluis Claret, Claudio Bohórquez, Gavriel Lipkind, Maria de Macedo, among others. In 2019 he finalised his Master’s degree in Performance with Professors Jeroen den Herder and Dmitry Ferschtman, on a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.