Álvaro Garcia de Zúñiga /Fundação Casa de Mateus
Lied Competition.
On behalf of the Jury, we announce the awarded work: Do what you’re told, for soprano and violoncello, by Fábio Chicotio.
The world premiere of the piece will take place on 19 December 2026 at Fundação da Casa de Mateus, performed by soprano Camila Mandillo and cellist Luís André Ferreira, soloists of the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble.
Jury: Philippe Leroux, Miguel Azguime
SOND’AR-TE ELECTRIC ENSEMBLE
2nd INTERNATIONAL LIED COMPOSITION COMPETITION ÁLVARO GARCÍA DE ZÚÑIGA – CASA DE MATEUS – SOND’AR-TE
In order to encourage the creation, performance, and dissemination of new musical works, the Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble, in partnership with the Casa de Mateus Foundation and the blablaLab Cultural Association, is promoting the 2nd edition of the “LIED COMPOSITION COMPETITION ÁLVARO GARCÍA DE ZÚÑIGA – CASA DE MATEUS – SOND’AR-TE.”
The Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble is an innovative contemporary music ensemble in the European new music scene. Its core structure is the permanent combination of 5 to 7 acoustic instruments (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano + viola + percussion + voice) with electronics relying on the Miso Studio’s technical expertise.
The Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble’s repertoire covers some of the most important works for ensemble up to 5 and 8 instruments of the 20th and 21st centuries. One of the key features of this project is the commission of new works, hence encouraging the strong and vibrant development of contemporary chamber music with electronics, with a special attention given to Portuguese creation.
The Sond’Ar-te Electric Ensemble composed by a young generation pool of exceptional musicians with individual careers as soloists, has gained since his premiere in September 2007 an outstanding artistic level and is already a reference in Portugal and abroad. In addition to its concert circulation around Portugal, Paris, Warsaw Autumn Festival, Bilbao Guggenheim Museum, City of London Festival, Seoul, Tokyo and Berlin, the Sond’Ar-te is strongly involved in media music theatre projects, in the development of educational activities such as the Forum for Young Composers and nurturing new audiences by presenting special programmes for children.
FUNDAÇÃO DA CASA DE MATEUS
The Casa de Mateus Foundation was set up in 1970 by D. Francisco de Sousa Botelho de Albuquerque. It is a private institution with public service missions in the areas of heritage, culture, art, education and scientific dissemination with a unique location in a low-density territory. At the centre of its action, we find the intersection between historical heritage, natural heritage, arts and innovation, reinforcing the perception of the value of cultural instruments and local action to overcome major global issues; or the confluence between cultural action, landscape and territory, from a sustainability perspective, involving people and communities in the emerging thinking about new forms of relationship with natural resources.
For the 2023/2024 biennium, the Casa de Mateus Foundation is proposing a multidisciplinary programme that starts with the visual arts, music, literature and dance and weaves through the infinite intersections between culture, artistic creation, educational projects and scientific dissemination.
With the support of the Ministry of Culture, through the Directorate-General for the Arts, and the Municipality of Vila Real, and persisting in its collaboration with an important group of institutional and artistic partners, the Casa de Mateus Foundation is calling on artists and creators from multiple backgrounds to develop strategies for transmitting artistic practices and forms of enjoyment that have a significant potential for transformation and, above all, invites citizens to take their landscapes as a place for permanent dialogue between memory and the creation of the new.
BLABLALAB AC
blablaLab Associação Cultural is a multidisciplinary language laboratory that fields on the work, inspiration and methodologies proposed by Alvaro García de Zúñiga and Teresa Albuquerque since 1996. Focused mainly on the intersections between music and theatre, performance art and concrete poetry, always with links to the visual arts, blablaLab's work navigates between different media, from the scene to publishing or radio stages, from the Manuel source-book to its realization in the 'Manuel Sur Scène', an infinitely open form that privileges the meeting of artistic languages and the mutual provocation between languages.