Pianist from Porto to play at Carnegie Hall next November

Pianist from Porto, Vasco Dantas debuts at Carnegie Hall, in New York on 17 November, at 2pm, at the Weill Recital Hall. In the meantime, the Portuguese pianist participates in the Piano on the Rocks Festival, in Sedona, Arkansas, and in Philadelphia, USA, from 26 to 28 April, as a preview of what he will offer in the Big Apple.

On 26 April, Vasco Dantas will perform at the Red Rocks Church, a solo of Arabesques of "The Blue Danube", by Johann Strauss and Schulz-Evler, and 'El Choclo', by Angel Villobo, with transcription by Kyoko Yamamoto, and Sandrine Erdely-Sayo.

The following day, the Portuguese pianist tickles the ivory at the United Methodist Church to perform works by Maurice Ravel and Claude Debussy.

Finally, on 28 April, he plays as soloist a piece by Sergei Rachmaninoff, and accompanies Mezzo-soprano Carla Canales, in a chamber songs recital with pieces by Georges Bizet and Leonard Bernstein.

Vasco Dantas was born in 1992, and started to study the piano at the age of four. He first performed publically at the Museu do Carro Elétrico, in Porto, when he was six years old.

He studied at the Porto Music Conservatory, where he studied with Professor Rosgard Lingardson, completing his studies with the highest classification. He has also studied the violin and took part in several orchestras, including Momentum Perpetuum, Orquestra XXI and the Metropolitana de Lisboa Júnior, as a concertino.

He concluded his degree with honour at the London Royal College of Music, under the supervision of Dmitri Alexeev and Niel Immelman, and studied orchestral conducting with Peter Stark and Natalia Luis-Bassa.

He also completed a Master in Performance with maximum grade, under the supervision of Heribert Koch, at the Münster University, in Germany, where he was accepted to pursue his PhD studies, the 'Konzertexamen'.