Concert Antena 2 | José Valente | Accordion

José Valente | Accordion

06 May '15 |   CGD Auditorium - ISEG

19 hours l duration 60 minutes

CO-PRODUCTION concertos.antena2@rtp.pt | Tel. 21 382 00 15

José Valente was born in Lisbon in 1989. He began his musical studies at the age of 10, under the guidance of Prof. Paulo Jorge Ferreira, at the D. Dinis Municipal Conservatory in Odivelas.

At the age of 18, he was admitted to the School of Applied Arts of the Castelo Branco Polytechnic Institute (ESART), where he completed his Master's Degree in Music, specializing in Accordion, in March 2013, under the guidance of professors Paulo Jorge Ferreira and Maria Luísa Correia Castilho. In the 2010/2011 academic year, this school awarded him a Merit Scholarship for having obtained the best classification in the area of Music.

He has won several prizes at national level: 1st prize, in the Castelo Branco Accordion Competition - Folefest (2008, junior category); 1st prize also in the Folefest competition (2009, senior category and chamber music and 2012, chamber music category); 1st prize in the 6th Caldas da Rainha Young Performers Competition (2009) and 1st prize in the 2014 Young Musicians Award (concert accordion category, higher level), having also won the European Union of Music Competitions for Young People (EMCY) Award and a Gulbenkian Scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation.

He was the first solo accordionist to receive the EMCY award. He also won 3rd prize in the chamber music category at the Coupe Mondiale international accordion competition in Scotland (2008). He has played with the Orquestra Gulbenkian, Orquestra Sinfónica Metropolitana and the Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, under the direction of the great conductors Cesário Costa, Pedro Carneiro and Olari Elts.

He attended master classes led by renowned accordionists, including Frédéric Deschamps, Friedrich Lips, Geir Draugsvoll, Mika Väyrynen, Paulo Jorge Ferreira, Vojin Vasovic and Yuri Shishkin.

He has given concerts all over the country, namely at Casa da Música, Centro Cultural de Belém, Gulbenkian, Mosteiro dos Jerónimos, Palácio Foz, Palácio da Independência, Salão Nobre do Conservatório Nacional de Lisboa, among many other venues.