José Pereira began his musical studies in Banda Musical Lanhelense. Later he studied at the Escola Profissional de Música de Viana do Castelo with Armando Gonzalez and at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra with Aníbal Lima. He attended masterclasses with Serguei Arantounian, Nicolas Chumashenco, Anotoli Swarzburg, Evélio Teles, Aníbal Lima, Gerardo Ribeiro, Lee-Chin Siow, Ilian Gronniz, Serguei Kravechenco, Vadim Répin and Thomas Brandies, among others. In 2003 and 2004 he received, respectively, the 2nd Prize and the 1st Prize in Violin – Superior Level in the Young Musicians Prize of RDP – Antena 2.

He has worked with conductors Peter Rundel, Emilio Pomárico, Brad Lubman, Paul Hillier, Michael Sanderling, Olari Elts, Joseph Swensen, Stefan Asbury and Peter Etvoos, among others. He has played with orchestras such as Orquestra Sinfónica do Porto Casa da Música, Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, Orquestra Gulbenkian, Orquestra Académica Metropolitana, Orquestra Pedro Álvares Cabral and OrquestrUtópica, among others. He is a founding member of the Ensemble Contrapunctus and the Webern Trio, and performs regularly with the Sond’Art Electric Ensemble, the Ensemble Darcos and the Musik Fabrik in Cologne. In 2014 he played solo with the Orquestra de Sopros do Departamento de Comunicação e Arte da Universidade de Aveiro and with the Orquestra Clássica de Espinho.

Besides having already performed in all the main national concert halls, and regularly integrating the programming of the main Portuguese music festivals, he has also performed in Valencia, Rotterdam, Huddersfield, Barcelona, Strasbourg, Paris, Orleans, Bourges, Reims, Antwerp, Madrid, Budapest, Norrköping, Vienna, Witten, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cologne, Zurich, Luxembourg and Brussels. In 2011, with the Remix Ensemble, he performed at the Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), the Agora Festival (IRCAM – Paris) and, in 2012, at the Strasbourg Music Festival and the Berlin Philharmonic. It is also with the Remix Ensemble that he has several discs edited, with works by Pauset, Azguime, Côrte-Real, Peixinho, Dillon, Jorgensen, Staud, Nunes, Bernhard Lang, Pinho Vargas, Wolfgang Mitterer, Karin Rehnqvist, Pascal Dusapin and Luca Francesconi, and the disc dedicated to Dusapin deserved prominence in the Gramophone magazine, being included in the list of the Critics’ Choice of 2013.

Among his most recent major projects, highlights include his solo participation with the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa, participation as Guest Concertino in the Basel Sinfonietta Orchestra, the world premiere of Francesco Filidei’s opera Giordano Bruno by the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, in Porto and Strasbourg, and also the world premiere of RI-TRATTO for solo violin, by composer Heinz Holliger.

Currently, José Pereira is a member of the Remix Ensemble Casa da Música, 2nd Concertino in the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa and Violin teacher in the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra.