Paulo Rios Filho

Paulo Rios Filho was born in Bahia, Brazil in 1985. In 2003, he began his studies in composition at the School of Music, Federal University of Bahia (UFBA). He is currently completing his Ph.d. in Music Composition at the Federal University of Bahia under the supervision of Professor Paulo Costa Lima working with the Composers Group of Bahia. In 2010 he wrote his Master's Degree thesis titled “Cultural Hybridization as a Methodological Horizon for Contemporary Music Creation.”

In 2007, he won the first prize of the Ernst Widmer Composition Prize (Salvador, Brazil) in two categories (chamber music and symphonic orchestra). In 2008, his piece O Terramoto de 1755 was awarded an honorable mention at the First International Competition for Young Composers of the City of Portimão, Portugal. In 2009, he won the first prizes in the Professor Fernando Burgos Composition Competition (Salvador, Brazil),and the FUNARTE/XVIII Bienal Prize in the chamber music category, during the XVIII Biannual of Brazilian Contemporary Music (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). His Choro de Estamira, was one of the seven winning compositions in the Nieuw Ensemble/BAM Dialogue Brazilian Composers' Competition, held in Amsterdam during the Gaudeamus Music Week of that year. In 2011 he was commissioned to write a new work, Música Peba Nº 2 from the Nieuw Ensemble, which premiered it in the same year at the Concertgebouw. The year 2012 began with two important commissions in the USA, one from the Americas Society (New York, New York) and another from Orpheus (Fresno, California). Both works will be premiered in April 2013.

In 2014, he is one of the 30 Brazilian composers to whom new works were commissioned for the XXI Biannual of Brazilian Contemporary Music, which will take place in the second half of 2015 in Rio de Janeiro. The selection of composers was made through a process of votation involving more than a hundred composers and professors from many states.

Between 2009 and 2010, Rios Filho was substitute professor of composition, harmony, counterpoint and improvisation at UFBA, and in the latter position, he was one of the organizers of the III FIMC – Contemporary Music Festival, held in September in Salvador. His music has been performed throughout Brazil and also in Venezuela, the United States, Portugal and the Netherlands. He is a founding member of OCA, a group of composers and artists that promotes the production of art in Bahia with special attention to the contemporary music field through the promotion of concerts, recordings, festivals and social projects based on music education.

Rios Filho is one of the coordinators of the Bafrik project which creates a meaningful bridge between composers, instrumentalists, ensembles, researchers and critics from Bahia and Africa, mainly through the means of an website involving artists on both continents. He is also one of the coordinators of the most recent OCA project, called MAB – Música de Agora na Bahia (Music of Now in Bahia), an year-long project focused exclusively on contemporary music production with nearly one hundred events that took place in May through December. He is also a founding member and collaborator of Camará Ensemble and professor at UFMA – Federal University of Maranhão (Campus São Bernardo).

In addition to these multiple interests, Paulo is a committed vegetarian and he rides a bicycle as one of his means of transportation in the city of Parnaíba, coast of Piauí, where he lives nowadays.