BASSOON | ORCHESTRA REPERTOIRE AND EXCERPTS | CHAMBER MUSIC
Vera Dias was born in Guimarães. At the age of twelve, he entered the Professional Artistic School of Vale do Ave, where he began his musical studies in the bassoon class of Jesus Coelho. Later, she studied with Paulo Martins, with whom he completed the Wind Instrumentalist Course, having been awarded the Dr.ª Manuela Carvalho prize. At eighteen, she was admitted to the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik (Karlsruhe) in the bassoon class of Günter Pfitzenmaier. Vera graduated in 2008 at the Lisbon Superior School of Music.
She collaborated with the Portuguese Orchestra of Music Schools, the Aproarte Orchestra, the Portuguese Symphonic Orchestra, the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik Chamber Orchestra, the Pforzheim Chamber Orchestra and the Stuttgart Chamber Orchestra, having performed throughout Europe and in the East. Vera Dias played under the direction of several internationally renowned conductors such as Lawrence Foster, Michel Corboz, Kirill Petrenko, Billy’s Betrand, Simone Young, Ton Koopman, Esa-Pekka Salonnen, Susana Mälki, Lorenzo Viotti and Giancarlo Guerrero, among others.
In 2003 and 2004, she was selected to join the European Union Youth Orchestra summer school, having only attended it in 2004. In 2003 she declined that opportunity to compete for the Jovens Músics Award, where she received the 1st Prize – Higher Level, in Bassoon mode. In 2004 she won 2nd prize at the Landespolizei Competition in Karlsruhe.
Vera has performed as a soloist with the Madeira Classical Orchestra and the Gulbenkian Orchestra, among others. In the area of chamber music, she performs in several concerts every year, especially in the Wind Quintet, in collaboration with musicians from the Gulbenkian Orchestra, but also in the most varied formations to interpret from Beethoven’s Septet and Schubert’s Octet to the repertoire for Trio and Wind Quartet.
She was a Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation grantee from 2003 to 2006. She has been the 1st Auxiliary Soloist of the Gulbenkian Orchestra since September 2006 and teaches Bassoon and Chamber Music at the National Academy of Advanced Orchestral Studies since 2018.