João Araújo
Updated: Jan 22, 2021
Portuguese pianist Joao Araujo is enthusiastic about the collaborative piano career. He specialized in this area at the Royal College of Music in London where he graduated with distinction with a Masters in Performance in Collaborative Piano. He studied with Simon Lepper, Nigel Clayton, and Roger Vignoles and was awarded a scholarship from the institution.
Previous degrees include a Bachelor in Piano Performance at ESMAE, Porto, and a Master in Music Education at Minho University, both in Portugal.
In 2018, Joao was awarded the John Newmark Prize for the Best Collaborative Pianist at the Montreal International Music Competition. Other awards include the Pianist Prize at the Maureen Lehane Vocal Awards at Wigmore Hall, London, and a nomination for the Gerald Moore Award in the United Kingdom.
He played in masterclasses of musicians such as Dame Kiri Te Kanawa, Sir Simon Keenlyside, Zuill Bailey, Johannes Goritzky, Edith Wiens, and Ann Murray. As a soloist, Joao has performed for Boris Berezovsky, Roger Muraro, and Josep Colom among many others.
In collaboration with other musicians, Joao has performed internationally in the UK, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Spain, Portugal, Canada, and Costa Rica in prestigious venues such as Wigmore Hall, Cadogan Hall, and Southbank Centre in London. He has performed at the Oxford Lieder Festival, Schubertiade Espace 2 (broadcasted by Radio Télévision Suisse), Povoa de Varzim, and Musica da Primavera International Music Festival which was broadcast live on the Portuguese public radio.
As an orchestral pianist, Joao has had the opportunity to work with composers such as Steve Reich and David Lang, during the UK premiere of his work “Increase.” For the 2016-17 season, João was the pianist for the BBC Symphony Orchestra Pathway Scheme.
Currently, Joao is a staff pianist at the Aveiro University (Portugal) where he works with the voice and string studios. He is a board member of EPTA Portugal and cofounder of the recently created APLied, an initiative that promotes the Lied genre in Portugal.