Gonçalo Alves Gato Lopes was born in Lisboa in 1979. He started his musical studies in the Academia de Música de Santa Cecília and then moved, at the age of fifteen, to Academia de Amadores de Música de Lisboa, where he studied classical guitar with Fernando Guiomar, Techniques of Composition and Musical Analysis with Eurico Carrapatoso and Pedro Rocha, and choir singing with José Robert. He joined the Improvisation class directed by Pedro Rocha. In parallel to music, he studied Applied Chemistry at the Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia and graduated in 2003.
In 2005 he began his Composition degree at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, where he studied composition with Luís Tinoco, Carlos Caires, João Madureira and Sérgio Azevedo, all renowned Portuguese composers. He graduated in 2008. After that, he began his Master studies with composer and maestro Christopher Bochmann and Carlos Caires in Évora, Portugal.
Among Gonçalo Gato's artistic achievements are a premier of a short opera called 'Mudos', for chamber orchestra, in Teatro São Luiz in Lisbon as part of an opera contest in 2008. In that same year, he won the first prize of the composition contest of Festival Internacional da Póvoa de Varzim in the chamber music category with the piece Derivação for solo piano (included in this recording). He later premiered Wandering - a mixed-media composition for saxophone and 2 laptops performing in real-time - integrated in Miso Music's concerts agenda. His interests are, therefore, wide-ranging in respect to the medium: purely acoustic, mixed media and acousmatic music are all part of Gonçalo's musical production.
Gonçalo Gato is the vice-president of a non-profit Association named Nova Orquestra de Lisboa (New Orchestra of Lisbon), a project that aims at training young instrumentalists and giving voice to young composers by commissioning works and hiring experienced maestros.
Website: www.goncalogato.com