The composer, author and director José Júlio Lopes began his career composing music for theatre. Today, his catalogue includes music for chamber orchestra, instrumental, vocal and choral music, electroacoustic, symphonic, large orchestra and opera. He studied music and piano at the AAM (Lisbon) and composition with Fernando Lopes-Graça, Christopher Bochmann, Carlos Caires and António Pinho Vargas. He also took masterclasses and composition seminars with Emmanuel Nunes (Lisbon) and Franco Donatoni at the Royal Academy of Music (London).
Parallel to his musical career, José Júlio Lopes completed a PhD in Communication Sciences at UNL and is a researcher at CESEM, UNL. In 2001, he founded OrchestrUtopica (OU), an ensemble dedicated to contemporary music, of which he was artistic director for fifteen years. His music is regularly performed by artists, ensembles and orchestras in Portugal and abroad. Some presentations of his works include Magma – chamber orchestra (OU, Cesário Costa; Casa da Música, Porto, 2005); SpaceCtrl – chamber orchestra (OU, Cesário Costa, Dresden Musikfestspiel, Germany, and Faro, Portugal, 2005); X-Acto – large orchestra and narrator (CCB GA, 2009, OML, São José Lapa, Pierre André Valade); Undo (Teatre Talia, Festival ENSEMS, Valencia, Spain, OU, Cesário Costa, 2010); Utos – orchestra (OU, Cesário Costa, 2011); Dark Times Quintet (2013, Joan Cerveró, Grup Instrumental de Valencia, CdM, Porto); Verbindung (Faro, 2015, OU, Cesário Costa); Corpus, piano and orchestra, commissioned by FCG – Artur Pizarro (piano) and Michal Nesterowicz (conductor), in 2016. He has presented three operas: Averroes (1986, based on a text by J.L. Borges); Nefertiti in 2000 (with his own libretto and staging, co‑production TNDMII and Teatro Trindade), conductor Cesário Costa; and W (about the life and death of the German philosopher Walter Benjamin, which he staged in 2007 at the GA of CULTURGEST, conducted by the Finnish conductor Tapio Tuomela). Future projects include Vages Tagen, for orchestra and voice; Lumen, for mixed choir; and O último anjo – an opera.
