Artistic Director - Miguel Azguime
Executive Director - Paula de Castro Guimarães
The Música Viva Festival exists since 1992.
These years long have witnessed a singular trajectory, and have indelibly influenced musical composition in Portugal, clearly demonstrating the vitality of Portuguese music, and also proving the urgent necessity of providing means and conditions for the development of this music which brings forward the future, and makes the present richer and more necessary.
Because the Música Viva Festival has always been an integrated initiative, stimulating and disseminating musical creation, rather than simply a collection of concerts, the Música Vivanaturally includes a substantial number of other events, including pedagogical activities, amongst which we draw special attention to the workshops for children, musical information technology courses and composition masterclasses; a series of lectures which question contemporary artistic creation and the relationship of music with other disciplines; an "Interactive Lounge" which encourages interactive exploration on the part of visitors of new artistic objects which dissolve categories and explore the very space of their definition.
To complete this panorama of the Música Viva Festival, mention must also be made of the Electroacoustic Composition Competition, which ends with a concert featuring the prize-winning works.
All these initiatives complement the concert programme, and make of the Música Viva Festival an enormous space for the circulation and exchange of ideas and aesthetics, in order to create a complete understanding of what Music is today, as always.
And finally, mention must be made of the precious collaboration of those who, whether individually or collectively, whether public or private institutions, national or foreign, have shown their unconditional support and ensure that, year after year, the Música Viva Festival can take place, a special framework within which Portuguese musical creation may meet its audience.
Miguel Azguime