Andreia Pinto Correia

Andreia Pinto Correia’s League commission Ciprés received its premiere by the Columbus Symphony Orchestra and Music Director Rossen Milanov on April 6, 2018.

An additional four orchestras will perform the work, part of a 30-orchestra consortium performing works commissioned by the the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation Orchestral Commissions Program for women composers, an initiative of the League of American Orchestras in partnership with the American Composers Orchestra.

National Arts Centre Orchestra and conductor Joana Carneiro on June 12 and 13, 2024.

Additional orchestras to be announced.

Dedicated to the Columbus Symphony Orchestra, Pinto-Correia’s Ciprés, inspired by poetry of Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca, was a radiant wash of color. The violins began with only the faintest thread of sound, growing almost imperceptibly. Out of this came a depiction of static water; eerie, towering cypresses; then poplars, then willows, emerging in bristling dissonances.

Jennifer Hambrick, Columbus Dispatch (Ohio) – review of the world premiere of Andreia Pinto Correia’s Ciprés

The prestigious literary magazine Jornal de Letras describes Andreia Pinto Correia’s compositions as “a major contribution to the dissemination of Portugal’s culture and language, perhaps a contribution larger than could ever be imagined.” Her music — described by the Boston Globe as “compellingly meditative” and by the New York Times as an “aural fabric” — is characterized by close attention to harmonic detail and timbral color. Following a family tradition of scholars and writers, her work often reflects the influence of literary sources from the Iberian Peninsula and beyond.

Ms. Pinto Correia is a 2015 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellow. Honors include commissions from the European Union Presidency, Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University, Boston Symphony Orchestra Brass Quintet, American Composers Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Tanglewood Music Center, National Symphony and National Dance Company of Portugal, Albany Symphony Orchestra, and Culturgest National Bank of Portugal. Her work Timaeus, a concerto for orchestra commissioned by the Boston Symphony’s Tanglewood Music Center in memory of Elliott Carter, was recently premiered at the opening concert of the Contemporary Music Festival’s 75th anniversary.

She has received awards and commissions from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Fromm Her works have been performed by the Minnesota Symphony Orchestra, Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Orchestra, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, and the Borromeo and the Mivos String Quartets. She has also been the recipient of a New Music USA Music Alive/League of American Orchestras Composer Residency, a Rockefeller Foundation Center Fellowship, a Civitella Ranieri Foundation Fellowship, the Alpert Award in the Arts/Ucross Residency Prize, and the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award by the Japan Society. In addition, she was the curator of the Fertile Crescent Festival for Contemporary Music at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.

Born in Portugal, Ms. Pinto Correia began her musical studies in her native Lisbon and received her Masters and Doctoral of Music degrees with Academic Honors from the New England Conservatory of Music as a student of Bob Brookmeyer and Michael Gandolfi. She attended the Minnesota Composer Institute, the European Network of Opera Academies (ENOA), the American Opera Projects (AOP), the Composers Conference, and the Tanglewood and Aspen Festivals. She was a participant in the first EarShot New Music Reading with the Memphis Symphony in 2009.

(April 2018)

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Photo Credit: Tiago Miranda/Expresso