Gulbenkian Orchestra Soloists
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Date
- / Cancelled / Sold out
Location
Grand Auditorium Calouste Gulbenkian FoundationIn-person ticket collection is available two hours prior to the event.
- Violin
- Violin
- Viola
- Viola
- Cello
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Francisco Lima Santos
Violin
Born in Lisbon, he began his musical studies at the age of nine at the Fundação Musical dos Amigos das Crianças, under Ana Margarida Sanmarful. He finished his degree in violin at Lisbon Conservatory, where he studied with Khachatour Amirkhanian. He continued his studies at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Brussels, under Yuzuko Horigome, first prize winner in the Queen Elizabeth Music Competition. He finished his studies in 2016 at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofía in Madrid, where he was a student of Ana Chumachenko and Zograb Tatevosyan. During his studies, he took masterclasses by Mauricio Fuks, Liviu Prunaru, Antje Weithaas, Veronika Hagen, Heime Muller, Pavel Gomziakov, Francesca Vicari and Krzysztof Wegrzyn. He was a member and scholarship holder of the Orquestra Sinfónica Juvenil, of which he was a soloist, having also performed solo in various concert halls throughout Portugal. He has been a member of Orquestra XXI since its beginning. He was a member of the European Union Youth Orchestra, with whom he played in various important European venues.
He has won prizes in the violin category in various competitions during his studies, such as the Fundão International Competition, the José Augusto Alegria Prize and the Young Musicians Prize. In 2016, he won the Vasco Barbosa Prize and in that same year he performed solo with the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra at São Carlos National Theatre. He is a member of the Artium trio, the ensemble that won the Young Musicians Prize in 2016, in the Chamber Music category.
He has played with a number of orchestras in Europe, including the Euskadi Symphony, the Belgian National Orchestra and the Munich Philharmonic. He has regularly performed in the Cantabile Festival in chamber music concerts alongside soloists such as Diemut Poppen, Ivan Monigetti, Christel Lee and Barnabas Kelemen. He has been 1st Auxiliary Soloist of the Gulbenkian Orchestra since 2017.
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Zachary Spontak
Violin
Violinist Zachary Spontak is an artist and cultural advocate, building connections between music and people around the world. Zachary is Principal 2nd Violinist of the Orquestra Gulbenkian in Lisbon, Portugal, and travels frequently to perform as violin soloist and chamber musician. Called a “natural leader”, Zachary collaborates with artists such as Itzhak Perlman, Midori, Sir Simon Rattle, and Maxim Vengerov. Zachary won First Prize at the Carnegie Hall GMP International Competition, Pro Artists International Competition, and Fischoff Chamber Music Competition, and was named Young Alaskan Artist of the Year in 2015. He has performed with the London Symphony Orchestra, Houston Symphony, Orquestra do Algarve, and Fairbanks Symphony, among others.
Zachary is an avid performer of new music, promoting the creation of art to search for beauty in our global society. He works with renowned composers such as Wolfgang Rihm, John Corigliano, Péter Eötvös, and Matthias Pintscher.
Zachary engages in music outreach, recognizing that many people worldwide do not have access to musical training. From 2016-2018, he worked in Buenos Aires, Argentina, performing and teaching in disadvantaged areas of the city. Zachary has been a teaching artist with Musaid, an organization that connects musicians across the globe through educational exchanges designed to inspire individual and community transformation. Zachary is Director of Education at the Anchorage Chamber Music Festival, which brings artists and students together for intensive learning and performing each summer in Anchorage, Alaska.
Zachary has a Master of Performance from the Royal College of Music in London, under the mentorship of renowned violinist Detlef Hahn. Other mentors include Paul Kantor, Roland and Almita Vamos, Dr. Gail Johansen, and Jean Krause.
Zachary lives in Lisbon with his wife Luísa, a classical singer, and son James.
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João Tiago Dinis
Viola
João Tiago Dinis was born in 1987 in Aveiro. In 2007, while still young, he joined the Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras, where he began his professional career. In 2023, he won a competition to become the B soloist for the Gulbenkian Orchestra’s viola section, which he still currently holds. He has also collaborated with various Portuguese and international orchestras such as the Kölner Kammerorchester, Orquestra de Câmara Portuguesa and, as first viola, the Orquestra do Festival de Marvão, Orquestra Clássica de Espinho and the Sinfonietta de Ponta Delgada, among others. As a soloist, Dinis has performed with the Orquestra Filarmonia das Beiras and the University of Aveiro’s Orquestra de Cordas.
In the context of chamber music, he has collaborated with the Quarteto de Cordas de Aveiro, as one of its founders, and with the Quarteto da Orquestra Clássica do Centro.
Dinis studied for a music degree at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo do Porto (ESMAE) and at the University of Aveiro, where he won third place in the Frederico de Freitas Prize in 2017. He is regularly invited to give masterclasses and workshops at institutions around the country.
Dinis plays a viola by Luís Claudio Manfio, “Isola Di Torcello”, from 2020 and a viola by António Capela from 2009.
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Albert Payà Velázquez
Viola
A native of Spain, Albert Payà Velázquez began studying viola at the age of seven. He completed a bachelor’s degree in viola at the Prins Claus Conservatorium in Groningen (Netherlands) where he studied under the renowned musician and tutor Ervin Schiffer. He continued his studies, finalising a master’s in performance at the Koninklijk Conservatorium Brussels, under Paul de Clerck.
While as a student in Brussels, he formed Quarteto Nostos, which gained him admission onto the master’s in chamber music programme at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam and into the Netherlands String Quartet Academy, where he studied under Marc Danel (Quatuor Danel), Stefan Metz (Orlando Quartet) and Sven Arne Tepl (Utrecht Quartet). During his studies, he had the chance to participate in various masterclasses, namely by Maxim Rysanov, Máté Szücs, Eberhard Feltz, Luc-Marie Aguera (Quatuor Ysaÿe), Peter Cropper (Lindsay Quartet), Cuarteto Quiroga, Vera Martínez (Cuarteto Casals) and the Debussy String Quartet. As a chamber musician, he has performed at major concert halls such as the Concertgebouw and Muziekgebouw in Amsterdam and at festivals such as Janine Jansen & Friends in Utrecht, Cordes en Ballade (France) and ProQuartet (France) with Quarteto Nostos and also at the Saint Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra with Quarteto Indigo.
As an orchestral musician, he was part of the Spanish National Youth Orchestra and worked frequently with Kamerata Zuid (Netherlands), Sebastian Strings (Belgium), Valencia Orchestra (Spain) and Gulbenkian Orchestra.
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Martin Henneken
Cello
Martin Henneken received his first cello lessons at the age of six. He studied at the Musikhochschule Lübeck (Germany) with Troels Svane. He later studied with Reinhard Latzko at the Vienna University of Music (Austria) where he completed his Master’s degree with distinction. Musicians such as cellist Lynn Harrell and violinist Walter Levin (LaSalle Quartet) complemented his training. He has won awards several times at the German National Young Musicians Competition. He was a student of the Live Music Now Foundation created by Yehudi Menuhin.
During his studies, he played regularly with various orchestras, such as the Lübeck Philharmonic, the Volksoper Wien Orchestra, the Vienna Symphony Orchestra and the Symphony Orchestra of India, Mumbai. In 2009 and 2010, he was a member of the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna Philharmonic) with which he had the opportunity to participate in recordings, international tours and festivals (Salzburg, Lucerne, BBC Proms). Since 2010, he has been 2nd Cello Soloist of the Gulbenkian Orchestra.
Johannes Brahms
String Quintet No. 2, in G major, op. 111
– Allegro non troppo, ma con brio
– Adagio
– Un poco allegretto
– Vivace, ma non troppo presto
Antonín Dvořák
String Quintet No. 3, in E-flat major, op. 97
– Allegro non tanto
– Allegro vivo
– Larghetto
– Finale. Allegro giusto
The Gulbenkian Orchestra consists of professional musicians of great technical and artistic quality. Throughout the season, they also perform in free chamber music concerts, thus emerging from the anonymity of their roles within the orchestra. While making themselves much more visible, they also make a considerable contribution to a greater appreciation of chamber music as a whole, from the standard repertoire to the premieres of new works.
Sponsor Gulbenkian Music
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