It was jazz and the prospect of a career as a saxophonist that led Andreia Pinto-Correia, armed with a scholarship, to the Berklee College of Music in Boston. However, an accident to her right hand changed both her academic and career path, and she then dedicated herself to jazz composition, as well as to creating and conducting a big band that only played her works. Some years later, Andreia, who in her native Lisbon had been interested in literature, popular traditions and various types of music, went on to choose a different language. “Being on stage and conducting a jazz orchestra was as much fun as playing, but I spent more time organizing rehearsals and concerts than I did conducting (…) There was little room for improvisation and more and more non-jazz instruments were used. Choosing to compose for a symphony orchestra was a gradual process.” Today, looking back six years later, it seems that was indubitably the path to take. Even if we take into consideration the number of jazz works that have been commissioned of her, two of which by the European Union Presidency (one of them, Cidade Imersa, is of great sentimental importance as she set to music a text written by her father, the lecturer and writer João David Pinto-Correia). Writing music for the cinema could also have been an option, following a degree in this area that would later culminate in composing a work in 2008 for the short film by Daniel Blaufuks, The Square in Marrakesh. But two consecutive merit awards at the New England Conservatory and the encouragement of the legendary Bob Brookmeyer, who supervised her master’s degree and even played some of her works, paved the way for the creation of a unique musical identity, modeled on Andreia’s many references – apart from jazz, European-style classical music, folklore from Iberia and other places, she is also influenced by literature, the visual arts and the cinema. The American press has praised the delicateness and elegance of her music, its harmonic construction and her sound technical mastery, as she collects some of the most prestigious awards for musical composition in the United States.

The success scale

It was in October 2011 that she truly made a name for herself upon her debut at Carnegie Hall, the first-ever by a Portuguese composer. The American Composers Orchestra, where Andreia had carried out a residency, played her piece Elegia a Al-Mu’tamid during the opening concert for SONiC, a new contemporary music festival. Up until then, she was already composing commissioned works only (although they were often works she had applied for) and one distinction followed another as she was chosen for various residencies with orchestras such as the Boston, Memphis and Minnesota Symphony Orchestras. Nowadays, several of the works commissioned under the scope of composition residencies are the result of direct nomination, such as the recent awards from the American League of Orchestras and the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra – which premiered Alfama in February in California, a piece it co-commissioned with the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. The work is part of the triptych that, on 11 and 12 April, will be performed in Lisbon by the Gulbenkian Orchestra, once again under the baton of Maestra Joana Carneiro, music director of the Berkeley Symphony. “The idea of a triptych came from thedirector of Gulbenkian Música, Risto Nieminen, and three pieces were grouped together that evoke memories, each of them with musical gestures that have repercussions on their course.” In the case of Alfama, there is the emotional memory of the place, the origins and roots that weave the work of this composer, and which are also evident in the Portuguese names she gives to almost all of her works. Perhaps this why some of the musicians from around the world who have played her pieces try to discover what the titles mean. This happened with Aldeias, a brass ensemble piece that premiered at the 2010 4th July celebrations in Tanglewood (USA), where Andreia Pinto-Correia evokes the popular traditions of a festive day in a Portuguese village. Quite apart from the symbolic importance of having one of her pieces performed on this American national holiday, there was also the nervous anticipation of sharing the concert programme with the reference name in erudite contemporary music, Elliot Carter – who was sitting behind the young composer throughout the entire performance.“I thought he was going to say something unpleasant about my music, and that I would be traumatized and my career would end there and then. But after my premiere, he tapped me on the shoulder and gave me a big kiss. We spent a good while talking, he was very friendly, and it’s a wonderful memory that I cherish.”