Orchestra Section
Born in 1983, Nuno Abreu began his musical studies in 1988 at the Fundação Musical dos Amigos das Crianças (Lisbon), where he studied with Maria José Falcão and finished the General Course in 2001 with high marks. In 2005, he graduated in Cello Performance from the Orchestral Instrumentalist course at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra, in the class of Professor Paulo Gaio Lima, with the highest marks.
In 2007, he completed his Master’s Degree in Performance at the Northwestern University School of Music (Chicago), in the class of Hans Jensen, with the highest marks. He was awarded scholarships from the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the Northwestern School of Music Fellowship.
He has taken part in masterclasses led by professors Ralph Kirshbaum, Frans Helmerson, Bernhard Greenhouse, Anner Bylsma, Wolfgang Boettcher, Márcio Carneiro, Lluis Claret, Martin Ostertag, Maria de Macedo and Xavier Gagnepain.
He has given several recitals in Portugal and abroad, having premiered three contemporary pieces by Portuguese composers (António Pinho Vargas, Hugo Ribeiro and Luís Cardoso) for solo cello. Critics have acclaimed his performances as ‘an excellent soloist, with a very beautiful sound and impeccable technique’ (Público newspaper).
He has been a member of the Private Music Schools Orchestra, the Metropolitan Academic Orchestra, the Northwestern University Symphony Orchestra (as bandleader), the Civic Orchestra of Chicago (training orchestra of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), the Ibero-American Youth Orchestra, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, where he worked with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Robert Spano, Christoph von Dohnányi and Charles Dutoit, among others. He was recently invited to join the European Union Orchestra, whose first public performance took place in Bucharest in January 2019.
In the United States, he won the Northshore Competition Prize (2007) and, in Portugal, the Young Musicians Prize for Chamber Music (Higher Level / 2004), as well as the Caldas da Rainha Interpretation Competition (2007). Also in 2007, he won the 2nd Prize and the Audience Prize at the Estoril Interpretation Competition.
He taught at the Gregorian Institute of Lisbon from 2007 to 2016 and has been teaching at the Metropolitana Professional School since 2013.
He is currently, and since 2016, Soloist A in the Lisbon Metropolitan Orchestra.