In November, we propose a reflection on gender equality and ways of moving towards it in the field of contemporary music composition and performance. We are publishing the arti­cle Diverse Voices Against Silencing – On Gender Discrimination in Contemporary Music, by Pedro Boléo, which aims to contribute to the discussion on these issues at a time when some of the activities of the European project Mind the Gap are taking place in Portugal. This project seeks to celebrate artistic diversity and promote equality in the field of con­temporary music creation.
       The project will feature educational activities, awareness-raising sessions and debates in Lisbon, as well as creative initiatives. These will include a concert featuring works by female composers, and a performance of a Cadavre Exquis – a collective composition created by nine female composers from France, Portugal, Latvia and Hungary. These countries are involved in this European project, of which Miso Music Portugal is a partner.
       At the same time, in this edition of In Focus, we publish the responses received from various Portuguese female composers to the question posed by MIC.PT: ‘In the 21st cen­tury, female composers in Portugal have been gaining increasing prominence, despite the fact that the significant imbalance between the number of female and male composers remains striking. What strategies might be suggested to address this imbalance?’ Several of the female composers who responded to the question are also active in other fields, ranging from teaching to research, and from the support, promotion and dissemination of new music.

On November 5, the Borealis Ensemble — featuring António Carrilho (recorder), Henrique Portovedo (saxophone), Helena Marinho (piano) and Nuno Aroso (percussion) — will premiere a new work by the composer Ângela da Ponte (published by MIC.PT), enti­tled Contornando (2026). The concert will take place at the David Russell Auditorium of the Vigo Higher Conservatory of Music, in Spain, and is the first of a tour entitled Margins, which will take Borealis to Riba d’Ave, Porto, Aveiro, Vila Real, Mafra and Évora. Also this month, at the Vigo Higher Conservatory of Music, there will be a performance of an­other work by Ângela da Ponte: on November 14, at the Martín Códax Auditorium, pianist Inês Filipe will present a recital whose programme is composed of music by Portu­guese composers, Behind the Keys, which will include the work Residual sounds after storms (2026).

On November 1, the Casa da Música Choir will per­form De Profundis by António Pinho Vargas at the Sala Suggia in the Casa da Música, Porto, under the baton of the choir’s new principal conductor, Léo Warynski. Composed between 2014 and 2015, this is the first work for a cappella choir by this composer (published by MIC.PT). Written at the request of conductor Paulo Lourenço, to whom it is dedicated, it is based on Psalm 130. The com­position De Profundis consists of nine sections that explore rhythm, syllabic division and the contrast between the rapid and slow delivery of the sacred text. In 2017, the work was released on CD by Warner Music, together with the 2013 composition for choir and orchestra, Magnificat, in a re­cording featuring the Gulbenkian Choir conducted by Paulo Lourenço and the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra conducted by Cesário Costa.

The work Concertino (1965), for string quartet, by the composer Constança Capdeville (published by MIC.PT), will be performed by the Miso String Quartet, featuring Pedro Lopes (violin), César Nogueira (violin), Joana Cipriano (viola) and Luís André Ferreira (cello), on November 12 at O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon, as part of the Mind the Gap project, which aims to reduce gender inequalities in the music sector and raise the profile of female composers of all generations. António de Sousa Dias was responsible for the graphic design, research and musical revision of the Concertino score. According to this composer (also published by MIC.PT), the piece includes, in the second movement, a kind of set of variations based on the Canção do Figueiral, an old Portuguese song that had previously been revived by Vianna da Motta and Fernando Lopes-Graça. The work Concertino is thought to have been composed before Música para 15 Executantes, also from 1965, according to the indications written on the score.

Baquetas à solta — for marimba, timbila, vibra­phone, six-xen, drums, bass drum and two card­board boxes — is the sec­ond piece by the composer Daniel Moreira (published by MIC.PT) written as part of the Kino-Kinesis project, a work in progress since 2026. This series of pieces for percussion quartet and electronics, cre­ated for the Drumming – Percussion Group, features ani­mated films made by children as part of the Clia/Anilupa project. The piece Baquetas à solta was composed for a film conceived by students at the Art School of the Porto Conser­vatory of Music, under the guidance of Felisbina Antunes and Fernando José Saraiva, from the Anilupa project. The con­cert by Drumming – GP will take place at the Porto Conser­vatory of Music on November 3, and the programme will include the first piece written by Daniel Moreira for the Kino-Kinesis series, entitled As mãos misteriosas for vibraphone, timbila, six-xen and two mbiras, as well as a piece by the Spanish composer Eduardo Soutullo.

Rotina (2026) for string quartet is a new work by the composer Fátima Fonte, commissioned by Miso Music Portugal, which will be premiered on No­vember 12 at O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon, as part of the Eu­ropean project Mind the Gap. At this concert, the Miso String Quartet — comprising Pedro Lopes (violin), César Nogueira (violin), Joana Cipriano (viola) and Luís André Ferreira (cello) — will also perform works by Constança Capdeville, Doina Rotaru and Kaija Saariaho. ‘Rotina’, explains Fátima Fonte in the programme notes, ’is composed of four miniatures, each built around an ostinato’. The composer adds that ‘just as the Italian word from which it derives — obstinato — suggests, each ostinato stubbornly repeats the same musical element, be it an interval, a rhythm or a melody. Almost all the mini­atures are based on a text, although this serves merely as inspiration. The poem for the first miniature is by Salette Tavares, and those for the third and fourth by Ana Hatherly.’ Furthermore, in October, MIC.PT released Notebook #26, as part of the series Portuguese, 20th and 21st Century Music Notebooks, dedicated to Fátima Fonte.

In November, two operas by the composer Fernando C. Lapa (published by MIC.PT) will be performed in Porto and Coimbra. The first, Amor de Perdição (2026), is an eight-scene opera, with Eduarda Freitas’s libretto and directed by Ángel Fragua. The work will be per­formed on the 15th at the Coliseu Porto Ageas, at the Porto International Arts and Opera Festival. With musical direction by Jan Wierzba, the opera will feature performances by Raquel Mendes (soprano), Paulo Lapa (tenor) and Inês Constantino (mezzo-soprano), as well as the Moços do Coro and the Oniros Ensemble. Fernando C. Lapa’s second op­era, Mátria – aqui na terra [based on Miguel Torga] (2021), will be performed on the 20th at the São Francisco Convent in Coimbra, in a pro­duction by the São Carlos National Theatre. This two-act work also features Eduarda Freitas’s libretto, staging by Ángel Fragua and musical direction by Jan Wierzba, who will lead the soloists Job Tomé, Ana dos Santos, Tiago Matos, Mário João Alves, Paulo Lapa, Sofia Marafona and Liliana Mourão, the Moços do Coro, the Community Choir and the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra.

Premiered in October, the work Becoming (2026), for violin, viola, cello and per­cussion, by Hugo Vasco Reis (composer published by MIC.PT), will be perform­ed once again in November by the Lisbon Contem­porary Music Group conducted by Vasco Pearce de Azevedo, as part of two concerts — on the 6th at the Casa da Música Jorge Peixinho in Montijo, and on the 21st at the Igreja do Colégio in Ponta Delgada (the Azores). In addition, on No­vember 13, the Space Festival in Montemor-o-Velho will host a performance of Diagrama, a new work by Hugo Vasco Reis for the Sonic Figures Project — an ensemble and an artistic research project, comprising Hugo Vasco Reis (composition and elec­tronics), Trevor McTait (viola) and Miquel Bernat (percus­sion). Finally, his work Re-Memory II (2026), for piano and electronics, will feature in the programme of the recital to be given by pianist Inês Filipe at O’culto da Ajuda, in Lisbon, on the 28th, to mark the release of the new album entitled Behind the Keys.

The composer Isabel Soveral (published by MIC.PT) is one of Portugal’s representatives in the Euro­pean project Mind the Gap. The Lisbon edition of this project will take place on November 12 and 14, at O’culto da Ajuda and the Lisbon School of Music (ESML). On November 14, at the ESML, a group of 12 instrumentalists, conducted by Rémi Durupt, will perform a collective work: a Cadavre Exquis featuring pieces by nine female composers from France, Hungary, Latvia and Portugal. The work includes a composition by Isabel Soveral, Configurations du Poète – Cadavre Exquis (2026). The composer will also take part in other activities within the Mind the Gap project — at the con­ference Women in Music Composition on the 12th at ESML, and at the round-table discussion with the composers of Cadavres Exquis on the 14th at O’culto da Ajuda. Further­more, in October, MIC.PT released a new edition of the Isabel Soveral’s Notebook (#15), as part of the series Portuguese, 20th and 21st Century Music Notebooks.

On November 14, clari­nettist Rúben Jacinto will premiere a new work for clarinet by Jaime Reis, entitled Fluxus, true course – magnetic course (2026), as part of the concert Clarinet Stories II, at the Joaquim D’Almeida Cinema-Theatre in Montijo. Clarinet Stories II marks the culmination of a project that premiered in 2025 at the Casa da Música Jorge Peixinho, in which four works written for clarinet by Simone Spagnolo, Jaime Reis and Nuno d’Eça, bring to life stories narrated by Rúben Jacinto (clarinet) and João Jacinto (actor). The project will culminate in an album to be released in 2027. Also on November 14, there will be a performance of the work Sigma.Cobre (2022), for cello and piano, by this composer (published by MIC.PT), as part of the Modena Contemporanea Festival in Italy. At this concert, entitled From Blindness to Lucidity, Jaime Reis’s work will be performed by musicians from the DME Ensemble: Alex Waite on piano and Ângela Carneiro on cello.

On November 27, O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon will host the release concert of João Castro Pinto’s new album, entitled PERMIOTIC – coa­lescing scenes. This new solo album was released on October 20 by Flag Day Record­ings (USA), as part of the composer’s short tour of the east coast of the United States. PERMIOTIC is the result of the convergence of distinct yet complementary approaches to soundscape composition, concrete music, acousmatic/elec­tronic music and noise. On this album, field recordings, syn­thesis and sound artefacts coexist on a continuum between «found and abstracted sound». At the concert at O’culto, João Castro Pinto (a composer published by MIC.PT) will perform five world premieres from the new album and also present the premiere of the composition The Rod of Asclepius, cre­ated in 2022 as part of the international collaborative project (©)OVID’S METAMORPHOSES, one of the most extensive proj­ects linked to the COVID–19 pandemic.

The work Rasgar o tempo (2026), for soprano, cello and electronics, by Mariana Vieira (a composer pub­lished by MIC.PT) will be performed on November 27 at the Marvila Library Auditorium in Lisbon, as part of another performance of Corpo Que Canta, a project by MUSICAMERA Produções. With artistic direction and vocals by Nataša Šibalić, chore­ography by Nélia Pinheiro, projections by Nuno Mika, lighting by Anabela Gaspar, cello by Maria Nabeiro, and dance by Rafaela Nunes and Sara Gomes, Corpo Que Canta is a multi­dis­ci­plinary performance that explores and questions the body and its surroundings, its some­times dysfunctional, urban and mechanistic nature, in a liberating dialogue between the sen­sations and the human condition. The starting point for this project is Philippe Manoury’s work En Echo, with poems by Emmanuel Hocquard, for soprano and live electronics. In addition, the piece Tre (2019) by Mariana Vieira, for flute and electronics, will be performed by Mafalda Carvalho, a flautist with the DME Ensemble, as part of the Modena Contemporanea Festival, on November 14 at Casa Ciao – Ex Cinema Cavour in Modena, Italy.

On November 4, the Meridian 2026 International Festival — SONIMAGICON, in Romania, will feature the performance of the inter­mezzo A Laugh from the opera A Laugh to Cry (2013), by the composer Miguel Azguime (published by MIC.PT). The concert will take place at the Goethe Pavilion of the Goethe-Institut in Bucharest, and the piece by Miguel Azguime will be performed by Laura Tătulescu (soprano) and Mihai Murariu (piano), members of the devotioModerna ensemble. Furthermore, on November 3, at the José Lúcio da Silva Theatre in Leiria, Miguel Az­guime will take on the role of speaker as part of the Diz-Concerto, with the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble conducted by Pedro Carneiro. The programme will consist of works by Daniel Martinho, (Sonho from 2014, with a poem by Fer­nando Pessoa), João Madureira (Toc, Toc, Toc… from 2009, with text by Hélia Correia), Pedro Rebelo (Quando Eu Nasci from 2011, with text by Isabel Minhós Martins), Rui Penha (Pendulum from 2012) and Sofia Sousa Rocha (Fala do velho do Restelo ao astronauta from 2014, featuring a poem by José Saramago).

The work Augurium II (2026) by the composer Patrícia Sucena de Almeida (published by MIC.PT), is included in the collective work Cadavre Exquis, created by nine female com­posers from France, Hungary, Latvia and Portugal, as part of the European project Mind the Gap. The performance of this work, as part of the project’s Lisbon edition, will take place on November 14 at the Lisbon School of Music (ESML), featuring an ensemble of 12 instrumentalists, under the direction of Rémi Durupt. Patrícia Sucena de Almeida will also take part in other activities organised as part of the Mind the Gap project — at the Women in Music Composition conference on the 12th at the ESML, and at the round-table discussion with the com­posers of Cadavre Exquis on the 14th at O’culto. In addition, in October, MIC.PT re­leased a new edition of Patrícia Sucena de Almeida’s Notebook (#7), as part of the series Portuguese, 20th and 21st Century Music Notebooks.

Touching the Ear, a project by Pedro Rebelo commis­sioned by the Viseu Inter­national Spring Music Festival, will be presented once again at the Belfast International Arts Festival, as part of the Belonging on Stage project by SARC: Centre for Interdisciplinary Research in Sound and Music. The presentation of the project by Pedro Rebelo, which features Irish percussionist Michael Speers and involves communities of people with hearing impair­ments, will take place at SARC in Belfast on November 7. Additionally, the work Quando Eu Nasci (2011), a music theatre piece for five instruments and a speaker, with a text by Isabel Minhós Martins, will be performed as part of an­other Diz-Concerto, this time at the José Lúcio da Silva Theatre in Leiria. The concert will feature a performance by the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, conducted by Pedro Carneiro. They will be joined by Miguel Azguime, who will take on the role of speaker.

Composed in 2012 by Rui Penha (composer pub­lished by MIC.PT), the work Pendulum for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, video and electronics forms part of the programme for the Diz-Concerto, which the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, conducted by Pedro Neves, will present at the José Lúcio da Silva Theatre in Leiria on November 3. Also in the first half of the month, on November 5, the Borealis Ensemble — featuring António Carrilho (recorder), Henrique Portovedo (saxophone), Helena Marinho (piano) and Nuno Aroso (percussion) — will premiere a new work by Rui Penha, entitled Caminhos de Floresta (2026). This con­cert will take place at the David Russell Auditorium at the Vigo Conservatory of Music in Spain, and is the first in a tour entitled Margins, which will take Borealis to Riba d’Ave, Porto, Aveiro, Vila Real, Mafra and Évora.

Universos Liquidos: III. é uma vontade que eu tenho is the title of a piece for piano composed by Solange Azevedo (a composer published by MIC.PT) this year and which will form part of the programme for the recitals that pianist Inês Filipe will be giving this month. The first concert will take place on November 14 at the Martín Códax Auditorium of the Vigo Conservatory of Music, in Spain, as part of the Vertixe Sonora season. The second concert will take place on November 28 at O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon, and will coincide with the launch of Inês Filipe’s new album, entitled Behind the Keys. This is a cre­ative and ex­perimental project dedicated to the sonic pos­sibilities of the contemporary piano, based on commissions by the pianist Inês Filipe, exploring the instrument beyond its traditional use — inside, on the strings and the structure.

In November, several works by the composer Sara Carvalho will be performed in Portugal and Spain. On the 1st, as part of the Cistermúsica 2026 Festival – Fronteiras, in Alcobaça, the Lontan Trio — Clara Gonçalves (saxophone), Francisco Martins (accordion) and Pedro Vasquinho (double bass) – will perform the piece Le départ de l’ombre (2026). The second work, over the margins (2026), is for recorder, saxophone, percussion and piano and will be premiered in a series of concerts by the Borealis Ensemble in Vigo (Spain), Riba d’Ave, Porto, Aveiro, Vila Real, Mafra and Évora, between November 5 and December 6. The piece resonance of a hidden mirror (2026), for prepared solo piano, will be performed by pianist Inês Filipe, first as a premiere at the Martín Códax Auditorium in Vigo on November 14, and then at O’culto da Ajuda in Lisbon on November 28, as part of the release of the album Behind the Keys. Finally — the piece slumscape (2017), for flute, piano and cello, will be performed by the Ensemble DME at Casa Ciao — Ex Cinema Cavour, in Modena (Italy), on the 14th; and the work Komorebi (2024) will be performed by QCContemporâneo and painted by the visual artist João Sobreira, at the Autumn Festivals, on November 21st, in Aveiro.

Ópera no elevador is a production that premiered last month as part of the re:opera project. It features music by the com­poser Sofia Sousa Rocha (published by MIC.PT), a libretto by Edward Ayres de Abreu and Tatiana Bina, and staging by Manoel Candeias. It will be performed again on November 14 at the Helena Sá e Costa Theatre, as part of the FIATO – Porto International Arts and Opera Festival. In this new work, four char­acters cross paths in a shopping centre lift in a Portuguese-Brazilian encounter. Amidst de­sires to go up, down, or to uncertain destinations, a breakdown forces the group to commu­nicate or pass the time by making important calls whilst waiting for the technician Ícaro Ascensão. Performed by the Braga Sinfonietta and conducted by Rita Castro Blanco, the production is under the artistic direction of Joaquim Pereira and features Sara Braga Simões, Lilian Raquel, Mariana Fabião, Nuno Dias and Saulo Giovannini in the cast. Additionally, Sofia Sousa Rocha’s work Fala do velho do Restelo ao astronauta, based on José Saramago’s poem, will be presented as part of the Diz-Concerto, featuring Sond’Ar-te, Miguel Azguime (speaker) and Pedro Carneiro (conduc­tor). The concert will occur on the 3rd at José Lúcio da Silva Theatre in Leiria.

On November 4, researchers from the Centre for Research and Information on Portuguese Music (MIC.PT), Cláudio de Pina and Jakub Szczypa, will give a presentation as part of the 15th Music Research Conference (EnIM 2026), an initiative of SPIM – Portuguese Society for Music Research, which will take place from November 4 to 6 at the National Museum of Music, in the Royal Palace of Mafra. Entitled Digital archiving of music in the age of technological ac­cel­eration: methodology, strategies and challenges, the presentation by Cláudio de Pina and Jakub Szczypa will address the multifaceted and bidirectional functioning of the MIC.PT portal, which has one of the largest databases dedicated to contemporary classical music created in Portugal and aims to actively contribute to a more plural, diverse and equitable cultural ecosystem. The EnIM 2026, co-organised by the National Museum of Music, CESEM – Centre for Music Studies, and INET-md – Institute of Ethnomusicology, Centre for Music and Dance Studies, presents itself as a premier platform for scientific and artistic communication, contributing to the development of a broad and demanding field of research in music and sound, taking into account the complexity of the disciplinary landscape of music studies and research practices.

In October, we lost Álvaro Salazar (1938–2026), a composer, conductor, teacher, musicologist and music critic whose work is an indispensable reference in contemporary Portuguese culture. In 1978, Álvaro Salazar founded Oficina Musical, a group dedicated to the study and promotion of new music. As a con­ductor, he was responsible for several Portuguese premieres by such influential composers as Janáček, Ives, Webern, Varèse, Eisler, Feldman and Ligeti, amongst many others. As a teacher, he played a key role in the development of the teaching of Musical Analysis in Portugal. Anton Webern, Edgar Varèse, Luigi Nono, Franco Donatoni and Morton Feldman were among the influences on Álvaro Salazar’s musical language. His compositional style is characterised by a preference for clear textures, in which he explores the boundary between determinate and indeterminate sound, by the use of silence as a structural and dramatic element, and by the controlled use of chance. In the interview given to MIC.PT in October 2018, Álvaro Salazar described his music as follows: ‘I have said a few times that “silence allows sounds to be articulated”. In other words, on the one hand, sounds are shaped by pauses of varying durations and by a writing in which pauses exist. On the other hand, one can also say the opposite: rather than silence sculpting sound, I would say that it is sound that sculpts silence. In this sense, silence is already a work of art.’

The jury for the 27th International Electroacoustic Composition Competition – Música Viva 2026, comprising the composers Gilles Gobeil (Montreal, Canada), Pedro Rebelo (Belfast, United Kingdom) and Miguel Azguime (Lisbon, Portugal), decided to award the 2026 Música Viva Prize to the French composer Leo Magnien for his work Dans la plaine incertaine. The jury also decided to award an Honourable Mention to Edmar Soria (Mexico) for his work Meta-auralidades de un Río Improbable. In this edition, the Música Viva Competition received a total of 56 valid entries.

MPMP Património Musical Vivo announces the eighth edition of the Musa Prize, created with the aim of recognising excellence in contemporary musical composition within the Western classical tradition, whilst promoting the Portuguese language as a vehicle for expression. In 2026, the poet in focus is Alexandre O’Neill. The works entered into the competition must be unpublished and take Alexandre O’Neill’s poetry as their departure point. They must be composed for voice (high or low, of any gender) and another instrument, and have a maximum duration of 10 minutes. The 2026 Musa Prize is open to composers of all ages and nationalities, and its jury consists of Carlos Caires (chair), Eduardo Luís Patriarca and Luís Duarte. Entries must be submitted by January 31, 2027.

Applications are now open for the 4th edition of the Young Chamber Music Season. In this context, the jury, comprising Nuno Pinto (clarinetist), Filipe Quaresma (cellist) and Miguel Azguime (composer) will select a maximum of four chamber music ensembles for the Season. The selected ensembles will have the opportunity to perform in a concert produced by Miso Music Portugal. The concerts, lasting between 50 and 60 minutes, must include at least one Portuguese work and one international work from the 20th or 21st centuries. The Young Chamber Music Season, a project by Miso Music Portugal and the Portuguese Association of Friends of Music, aims to encourage and inspire young Portuguese musicians to perform works by Portuguese composers. Applications must be submitted by January 31, 2027.

In March, the MIC.PT published on its YouTube Channel one new In the 1st Person Interview (in Portuguese) with the composer João Pedro Oliveira. The musicologist and journalist Pedro Boléo conducted this interview recorded in 2024, in Lisbon, at O’culto da Ajuda.
Presently the MIC.PT YouTube Channel contains 38 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 Invention and Research radio broadcasts, produced by the MIC.PT and Miso Music Portugal for the RTP 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 over 20 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.