In September, the MIC.PT In Focus section presents an interview with the young composer Miguel Resende Bastos to mark his 30th birthday.
Miguel Resende Bastos was born in Porto in April 1995. His music reveals the influence of artistic trends and great composers from the second half of the 20th century and the 21st century, as well as of his teachers: Dimitris Andrikopoulos, Ivo Medek, René Uijlenhoet and Robin de Raaff, with whom he studied in Porto, Brno and Rotterdam. His works have won several awards, including first prize in the 2020 Musa Prize, an initiative by the MPMP Património Musical Vivo, for his piece Um Adeus aos Deuses, based on the text by Ruben A. During the 2020–2021 season, he was composer-in-residence at the MPMP. More recently, Miguel Resende Bastos has worked on pieces combining music and recitation, as well as on opera and electronic music. He has also worked on dance pieces and within collaborative performances, such as Vórtice (para o fim de um tempo). At the same time, Miguel Resende Bastos continues to perform as a flutist and improviser. He is also involved in recording, mixing, and music editing, and was a member of the Coral de Letras of the University of Porto.

Escape Mechanism (2025) by António Ferreira (a composer published by MIC.PT), is one of the pieces that will represent the Portuguese Federation of CIME (Miso Music Portugal) at the General Assembly of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music. This year, the assembly will take place in Hangzhou, China, on September 26 and 27. Escape Mechanism was premiered in June at the World New Music Days 2025 festival in Portugal. António Ferreira reveals in the programme note that ‘it is an acousmatic composition with all the expected aesthetic trappings: abstract sounds contrasted/ mingled with treated recorded sounds, in a continuous swirl of movement pointing to a possible escape from a troubled world… The continuous movement is realised by using small sounds, particles, which are sometimes source-recognisable and whose movement is achieved by a combination of energy (level) and frequency content (timbre) panning (with a sprinkle of doppler shift).’

September will feature A Parábola, a monographic music-theatre concert by Carlos Alberto Augusto (a composer published by MIC.PT). The first concert will take place on the 9th at the Salão Nobre of the Garcia de Resende Theatre in Évora. The second concert will be at the Cultural and Congress Centre in Caldas da Rainha on the 20th. A Parábola consists of a cycle of pieces for solo musicians-actors. These pieces combine various instruments (viola, marimba, percussion, and classical guitar) with electronic and textual components, originating from The Parable of the Beast, a book by John Bleibtreu. The presentation of the guitar piece will be a world premiere. In addition to being a composer, sound designer, specialist in acoustic communication, essayist, and teacher, Carlos Alberto Augusto has been regularly active in the field of music-theatre, especially since 2001. This work is thus a gathering of soloists in a genre that challenges and imposes new technical and artistic demands.

On September 11, Daniel Moreira’s new work for solo cimbalom, Curta-metragem n.º 2 (Brumas de Outono), will premiere at the Casa da Música in Porto. The piece will be performed by the percussionist Manuel Campos at the Transplanted Roots Research Symposium, an event dedicated to percussion research and performance, organised in partnership between the Drumming – GP, ESMAE, and Casa da Música. This piece is part of a cycle of solo-instrument works, in which the composer (published by the MIC.PT) dialogues with the universe of silent cinema. ‘In the cimbalom piece’, explains Daniel Moreira, ‘the reference is Dimitri Kirsanoff’s film Brumes d’Automne from 1929. The music draws from the film’s melancholic atmosphere, in which, in the style of impressionist cinema, images of rain, shadows and fog evoke the state of mind of a woman distraught by the end of a love affair’.

The world premiere of Sōma, a work for a quartet of improvisers, orchestra and live electronics by Igor C. Silva (a composer published by the MIC.PT), will take place on September 21 at the Kölner Philharmonie in Germany. The piece will be performed by the Duisburger Philharmoniker, under the baton of Mariano Chiacchiarini, and with the improvisation quartet comprising Mané Fernandes (guitar), Zé Almeida (double bass), Diogo Alexandre (drums and electronics), and Igor C. Silva on electronics and synthesisers. Then, five days later, on the 26th, the work will have a second presentation, this time at the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon by the Gulbenkian Orchestra, also conducted by Mariano Chiacchiarini and with the same improvisation quartet. The composition Sōma was commissioned by the ECHO network with the support of the Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation.

As part of the cinema concert featuring Manoel de Oliveira’s first short film, Douro, Faina Fluvial, the Portuguese Symphonic Band, conducted by Martim Sousa Tavares, will perform two new musical creations by composers Daniel Martinho and Francisco Ribeiro (published by MIC.PT), as well as music by Vasco Valente. The concert will also feature a presentation by Martim Sousa Tavares and will take place on September 7 at Casa da Música in Porto. Created by Manoel de Oliveira in 1931, Douro, Faina Fluvial is a pioneering work of Portuguese documentary cinema. This poetic and dynamic portrait focuses on the hard work of the people of Porto and the daily life on the banks of the Douro River. The scores by Daniel Martinho, Francisco Ribeiro and Vasco Valente establish contemporary interpretations that dialogue with the rhythm and visual power of the film. The Portuguese Symphonic Band was founded 20 years ago and its repertoire ranges from classical arrangements to original works, including many premieres by Portuguese composers such as Luís Tinoco, Carlos Azevedo, Fernando C. Lapa, Daniel Moreira and Pedro Lima, among many others.

João Castro Pinto’s acousmatic work Circumsphere: to Bounce & Rebounce (2024) is one of the pieces representing the Portuguese Federation of the ICEM (Miso Music Portugal) during the General Assembly of the International Confederation of Electroacoustic Music, which will occur in Hangzhou, China, on September 26 and 27, as part of the Musicacoustica festival. According to João Castro Pinto, this work ‘dives into the sonic and musical richness of spherical objects (marbles, rubber/ ping pong balls, wooden and polystyrene spheres). The goal was to explore, both sonically and musically, the physical and phenomenological qualities evident in the concept of roundness, a kind of acousmatic circumnavigation through a cartography of movement.’ Additionally, sections no. 5 and 6 of the soundscape composition Faux Naturel, created in 2022 by this composer (published by MIC.PT), were presented on July 20 as part of the Sur Aural 2025 – RE/SONÂNCIAS festival (Bolivia). In this sense, between July 16 and 26, the Sur Aural Radio broadcast the selected festival works on a daily basis. These broadcasts are now available for listening via the festival’s online archive.

The composer Luís Neto da Costa (published by the MIC.PT) will participate in the Transplanted Roots: Percussion Research Symposium, occurring from September 10 to 13 at the ESMAE – School of Music and Performance Arts in Porto. Transplanted Roots is organised in partnership by the Drumming – GP, the ESMAE and Casa da Música. The conveners are Miquel Bernat, Bruno Pereira, Manuel Campos and Rui Penha (also a composer published by the MIC.PT). The symposium will gather researchers and professionals working in the field of contemporary percussion. The goal is to integrate and present written, oral, and performance research in percussion and construct a global picture of this quickly evolving discipline, with a fresh and critical view that transcends the dominance of the European and North American tradition. The format consists of presentations, lecture-recitals, and concert performances. In this context, Luís Neto da Costa will give a lecture entitled Creative Adaptation in Composition: A Decade of Collaboration with Performers.

The English version of Miguel Azguime’s presentation at the Thirst for Change Colloquium, which took place as part of the World New Music Days 2025 festival in Portugal on June 5, has been made available on the blog of Simon Cummings, a composer, critic and researcher based in south-west England. ‘I was deeply struck by the force of Miguel Azguime’s words, which I found to be thought-provoking, persuasive and inspiring’, writes Simon Cummings on his blog, 5:4. He highlights that the presentation, coming from the perspective of spectral music, also refers to Miguel Azguime’s opera A Laugh to Cry. Miguel Azguime entitled his presentation Listening to the Earth: Spectral Music, “A Laugh to Cry” and Ecological Activism (The role of music in Ecological Activism and the place of my New Op-Era “A Laugh to Cry”), thus proposing the hypothesis that art and music are powerful forces in ecological activism, because they ‘speak not only to the intellect, but to the emotions, the senses, and the imagination...’.

In September, Paulo Bastos (a composer published by MIC.PT) will present two monographic concerts in Japan. This Cultural Exchange Portugal/ Japan programme, supported by Ibermúsicas and the GDA Foundation, will begin in Tokyo on September 10. This concert, at the Salon de Musica, will feature the presentation of works such as Flutz (2016), Kind of (a) (2025), about(va) (2025), Kind of (b♭) (2025), Indizível (2015), about CP “Frustration” (2025), Kind of (c) (2025), Flutzcla (2016), Ascent (2025) and Por onde vais? (2025), performed by an instrumental ensemble of flute, bassoon, trumpet, tuba, vibraphone, and piano, bringing together Portuguese and Japanese musicians. The programme will be repeated on September 13 at Iwate University, located in Morioka, in northern Japan. This internationalisation project stems from the desire to bring Portuguese music, culture, experience, and knowledge to distant listeners, thereby reaching new and broader audiences. Paulo Bastos will also give a lecture on Portuguese music, focusing on the current generation of composers, as well as workshops on composition and electronics, sharing his knowledge with students at Iwate University.

On September 13 and 14, the Informal Opera Festival (FIO) will take place in the Algarve, visiting locations such as the António Aleixo Amphitheatre and the Santuário da Mãe Soberana in Loulé, as well as the Professional School and the Fonte Pequena Amphitheatre in Alte. Two of the participating composers are published by MIC.PT: Fátima Fonte – also a member of the FIO's artistic direction – with the opera Abelardo e Heloísa (text and staging by Patrícia Portela); and Gerson Batista, composer of Mane-Quim/ Pig-Malião (text by Tiago Schwäbl and staging by João Fino). In addition, they are joined by Sara Ross with M.O.G.A. (text by Inês Barahona and staging by Sara Ross and Teresa Gentil) and João Caldas with Coisas do Verão (text by Pedro Rodrigues and staging by Márcia Lança). The artistic team includes the conductor Jan Wierzba and the conductress Rita Castro Blanco, the renowned soloists Ana Caseiro, Sara Afonso, António Lourenço Menezes and Ricardo Rebelo da Silva, and musicians from the Algarve Orchestra. The festival will also feature the participation of Francisco Brazão, coordinating a participatory opera with young people, and of the Coro da Aldeia, a community music group from the Algarve.

In August, the MIC.PT activated a new Performer’s Page dedicated to Camila Mandillo. The young Portuguese soprano, currently in residence at the Queen Elisabeth Music Chapel in Belgium (under the guidance of Sophie Koch and Stéphane Degout), is increasingly gaining recognition both nationally and internationally, with a particular focus on opera and contemporary music, including works by various Portuguese composers. Camila Mandillo has worked with several leading ensembles, including the Gulbenkian Orchestra, the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra and the Casa da Música Baroque Orchestra. Simultaneously, she regularly participates in the projects of the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, one of Portugal’s leading contemporary music groups. Also noteworthy is her recent nomination as one of the ECHO network Rising Stars for the 2026–2027 season, following a joint nomination by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, Casa da Música and BOZAR. This award enables Camila Mandillo to embark on an international tour and perform in prestigious concert halls throughout Europe.

The MIC.PT activated a New Composer’s Page dedicated to Marta Domingues in August. The works of this young composer are notable for their aesthetic and technical diversity and include acousmatic, mixed and instrumental music written for various ensembles. Her music is known beyond borders and has been performed in several countries, including Northern Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Sweden and Cyprus. Marta Domingues’ work has also been recognised at various international events, including the Métamorphoses 2020 competition (Belgium), Young Lioness of Acousmatic Music (Austria) and a recommendation at the 69th edition of the International Rostrum of Composers (the Netherlands). At just 25 years old, Marta Domingues also stands out for her continuous collaboration with the DME Project and the Lisboa Incomum, between 2020 and 2024.

Presently the MIC.PT YouTube Channel contains 36 new interviews to composers residing in Portugal, realised since 2019; as well as eight interviews from the MIC.PT Archive, realised between 2003 and 2005.
The new interviews, conducted by Pedro Boléo, were filmed at the O'culto da Ajuda in Lisbon and realised in the context of the In the 1st Person cycle of the Music Today and Music of Research & Invention radio broadcasts, produced by the MIC.PT and Miso Music Portugal for the Antena 2. They constitute a (re)visit to the creative universe of various composers published by the MIC.PT, following the Historical Interviews recorded by the MIC.PT almost 15 years ago. Today they are unique registers of the artistic evolution of each interviewed composer.
In order to access the interviews (in Portuguese) follow the links below or visit the MIC.PT YouTube Channel.