Almeida Prado

José Antônio Rezende de Almeida Prado started his musical studies in Santos, where he was born in 1943.

In Sao Paulo, in 1954, he studied piano under Dinora de Carvalho, composition under Camargo Guarnieri, and harmony and counterpoint under Osvaldo Lacerda. After winning a composition contest in the late sixties, he went to Paris where, from 1969 to 1973, he studied under Olivier Messiaen, Nadia Boulanger and Annette Dieudonnée. Back to Brazil, he directed the Municipal School of Music in Cubatao and, in 1975, went to the University of Campinas-Unicamp, as a teacher on musical composition at the Music Departement.

A great number of pieces for vocal, instrumental and mixed ensembles, from his vast catalogue, has been published in Germany by Tonos. His manifold style includes Villa-Lobos and Guanieri’s nationalism, the atonal postserial phase, the Afro-Brazilian of Sinfonia dos Orixas, the post-modernisme of pieces as Poesiludios and the free tonal style. Also a pianist, he has performed many auditions in Brazil and abroad, and several concerts with orchestras under reknowned directors.

He died in São Paulo in 2010, having lived there for the latter part of his life.