Cândido
Lima
Composer, pianist, teacher, philosopher and essayist, Lima is one of the most prominent figures on the Portuguese contemporary music scene. He began his musical studies in Piano and Composition in Braga, where he performed for many years as organist at the Cathedral. His exceptionally rich curriculum includes not only Philosophy and Humanistic Studies at the Catholic University in Braga, but also various degrees in Aesthetics and Musical Arts obtained in Paris, where one of his professors and mentors was Iannis Xenakis, composer with whom he maintained close contact until his death in 2001. In 1973 Cândido Lima founded the Grupo Música Nova. He has had a significant role in the development of courses, seminars, conferences and festivals dedicated to new music. As critic and essayist he has written articles for various key journals as well as for national and regional press, not to mention numerous studies on Western art music. Cândido Lima is above all a thinker, a composer-philosopher and this is the reason why his music has a manifestly experimental character and nature, dominated by the desire to express "the ephemeral and the eternal, the gods' gift of translating everything into music."