Patrícia Pinheiro

Patrícia Pinheiro grew up surrounded by stories. Shaped by her grandfather's love of storytelling and the oral singing traditions of Portugal, she developed a special attentiveness to listening early on – music became for her a space of closeness. At the age of 21 she moved from Portugal to Germany and studied at the HfMDK Frankfurt. Since then her artistic work has moved between orchestral practice, contemporary music and open, interdisciplinary formats. She has worked with the HR Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Ulysses, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, Ensemble Reflektor and the Asambura Ensemble, among others. Her work has taken her to festivals such as Festival ManiFeste (Paris), Kunstfest Weimar, the Lucerne Festival, the Berliner Festspiele and the Warsaw Autumn. Alongside the classical concert context, she is especially interested in formats at the intersection of music, improvisation and electronics, for example in productions such as Falstaff at the Staatstheater Gießen and Solastalgia at Schauspiel Frankfurt. As a guest musician with the Big Band of the Hessischer Rundfunk Frankfurt she expanded her practice into jazz and big-band music. As part of Tarek Atoui's Extended Playground at the GfZK Leipzig she worked with instruments beyond her own background, which broadened her practice beyond the oboe and shaped her playful approach to sound and performance. Out of the TONALI-LAB, and later with the support of the Orchesterstiftung, she developed her first solo project for oboe ›I would… if I could get out of my head‹ in collaboration with the artist Chiara Stuto, which continues to be performed. Patrícia was an academist of the TONALI stage academy, where she developed À Mesa – a site-specific intervention in Portugal – and completed the International Ensemble Modern Academy with a scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW. This year she was selected as a fellow of the TRANSIENT Academy and Concerto21. Storytelling forms the core of her artistic work – through the oboe as much as through collaborative processes that open spaces for encounter, attention and empathy.