Portuguese Composer

Among Portuguese composers, Patricio da Silva is noted for his eclectic and personal musical style.
His works have been performed at the major European and American concert halls and contemporary classical music festivals, including, Tanglewood Music Festival (summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra), the Ravinia Music Festival (summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado, the Ojai Music Festival in California, and the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival, in Germany.


International Barto Prize


Tzimon Barto, pianist ”[…] In a career that has spanned two decades and thirty countries, while I have programmed many contemporary pieces in solo recitals, I never known an audience to respond so enthusiastically to a “new-born” work, as I did this past summer while touring with Mr. da Silva’s “Three Movements for Solo Piano […]” by Tzimon Barto

In a career that has spanned two decades and thirty countries, while I have programmed many contemporary pieces in solo recitals, I never known an audience to respond so enthusiastically to a “new-born” work, as I did this past summer while touring with Mr. da Silva’s Three Movements for Solo Piano
Tzimon Barto, pianist

Winner of the International Tzimon Barto Piano Composition Prize, Patricio da Silva's compositions went on tour with American celebrity classical pianist, Tzimon Barto, receiving rave reviews from German and Austrian music critics. Pianist Tzimon Barto has described Patricio da Silva's classical piano music as:

”[…] In a career that has spanned two decades and thirty countries, while I have programmed many contemporary pieces in solo recitals, I never known an audience to respond so enthusiastically to a “new-born” work, as I did this past summer while touring with Mr. da Silva’s “Three Movements for Solo Piano […]” by Tzimon Barto

The premiere of his Clarinet Quintet at the London Festival of American in 2009, brought again the recognition of the European press, namely from the editor of Musical Opinion, England's oldest music publication. While the youngest ticket on the program, the Clarinet Quintet by Patricio da Silva, programmed against the Ivy-league establishment of Princeton, Harvard and MIT, had the critics and audience alike, welcoming and celebrating the differences between the music of Patricio da Silva and the East-Coast academics.
"Patricio da Silvas Clarinet Quintet was quite another matter: here is a genuine creative voice, his work being full of interest and beguiling invention" "The frequent pattern-like rhythmic interests were fascinating. The writing for clarinet was excellent, and the composer was present to acknowledge the prolonged applause.[...] Only Patricio da Silva's piece demonstrated the stylistic consistency of a composer who has something to say, certain of his own direction." in Musical Opinion 

"Patricio da Silvas Clarinet Quintet was quite another matter: here is a genuine creative voice, his work being full of interest and beguiling invention.
The frequent pattern-like rhythmic interests were fascinating.
The writing for clarinet was excellent,
and the composer was present to acknowledge the prolonged applause.
Only Patricio da Silva's piece
demonstrated the stylistic consistency
of a composer who has something to say,
certain of his own direction."

in 
Musical Opinion


Since 2010, his Guitar Concerto has been featured multiple times with the syndicated radio show "Classical Guitar Alive", with Tony Morris, totaling over a thousand broadcasts by over three hundred classical music radio stations, from the USA and Canada, Europe to The Philippines.

Education


As a young man, Patricio da Silva had two parallel music worlds. From age 7, he learned classical piano and introduced to Iberian, German, French, Italian, and Russian repertoires. In addition, from age 10 through his early teens, he also played the flute in a community band. While the conservatory provided structured knowledge, the exposure of making music in a community band, side by side with local farm workers and glass artisans, gave da Silva a privileged, first-hand understanding of the social functions of music, with a repertoire ranging from classics' highlights to Sousa Marches, from passodobles (also, pasodobles) for the traditional Portuguese Bullfights to Processional and Religious Music.


Members of Banda Filarmónica da Maiorga
Patrício da Silva (flute, lower-right)

His music studies first started in his hometown in Alcobaca, Portugal, at the age of 7. He first enrolled at a conservatory at the age of 13 in Figueira da Foz studying piano with Beatriz Cardozo, herself a former pupil of Vianna da Motta, one of Franz Liszt's last disciples, and a virtuoso of international reputation, composer, conductor, and pedagogue.

Meanwhile, with his fellow band members, he went on to perform as a member of this community band all over Portugal, many of the gigs included the typical religious processions of catholic cultures, parades and concerts in outdoor venues, traditional concert halls, and bullfight arenas on the national TV station RTP. The young da Silva also took part in the Band's first international tour to Monaco and the south of France and took part of 1st Centenary celebratory season.

Back at the conservatory, a piano audition at the end of his first year attracts the attention of Gilberta Paiva, a notable Portuguese music pedagogue. Two years later, at the age of 15, Patricio da Silva becomes her full-time student and assistant for the next three years, until college age.

With Gilberta Paiva, at the age of 17 Patricio da Silva won first prize in the National Piano Competition Maria Campina, graduated from high-school at the National Conservatory School of Music in Lisbon and was admitted to the Lisbon College of Music that same year in the class of Jorge Moyano at the Lisbon College of Music, ranking 2nd place in piano, and 1st place in both Music Analysis and Composition. He graduated in 1994 in piano performance officially enrolling that same year in composition courses with Antonio Pinho Vargas.


Piano Recital by Patrício da Silva, Santarém, 1988
Patrício da Silva, piano recital, Santarém, 1988

20 Years in America


Patricio da Silva immigrated to the USA in January of 1996. He studied composition at the California Institute of the Arts with the founding fathers of the school: Mel Powell, Morton Subotnick, and Stephen Lucky Mosko. He attended the Darmstadt Music Courses in 1998, and in 2002 the Stockhausen courses, both in Germany. In 2003, he is awarded the doctoral degree in composition by the University of California, studying composition with William Kraft and electronic music with Curtis Roads at UC Santa Barbara, and concurrently, algorithmic composition with David Cope at UC Santa Cruz. He credits both Lucky Mosko and David Cope as "the best composition teachers one could ask for".

In 2003, da Silva moved back to Europe to proceed his work on algorithmic composition and music with Artificial Intelligence, first with a post-doc at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique), in Paris, France, and a year later, on the Devon coast in the UK, with the support of the Portuguese Science and Technology Foundation, returning to California in 2005.

He holds both Portuguese and American citizenships.

Awards and Honors


Patricio da Silva's awards include the International Barto Prize, Music for Tomorrow Prize, composer in residence with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra for two consecutive seasons, orchestral music selected by the American Composers Forum for new American orchestral music repertoire. Commissions and investments in new works and support for live concerts and recordings include, among others, Merryl Lynch, the Ojai Music Festival, American Harp Society, Gould Foundation, Betty Freeman Foundation, Otto Eckstein Foundation, Ford Schumann Foundation, Norton Stevens Foundation. Patricio da Silva multimedia work includes projects for Disney, Warner Brothers, Nickelodeon, Apple, Golden Era Productions, SCI Studios.