Pianists Accompaniment
Eduardo Jordão
Pianists Coordinator
Graduated in piano performance in the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. Eduardo won the 1st Prize in the “1st Lopes-Graça Competition”.
As a soloist and in chamber groups he performed in France, Italy, Ireland, Germany, Luxemburg, Brazil and China. On mainland Portugal and portuguese Islands he performed on several stages from north to south.
Since 2007, he has maintained the piano duo “20Fingers” (4-hands) that explores music from classical to jazz.
In 2014, he recorded his first album with singer Joana Rios. This album, titled “Retrato a Cores”, contains original songs wrote by himself.
In 2018, supported by the General Directorate of Arts, he launched his second album together with cellist Samuel Santos, entitled “Canções sem Palavras”, which contains the works for cello and piano by Portuguese composer Eurico Carrapatoso.
Also with the support the General Directorate of Arts, the phonographic record of the recital “20Fingers – from Mozart to Chico Buarque” was released 2020. This work was presented at the International Piano Festival of the Algarve and taken on tour through Brazil and China in the summer of 2021 and 2024.
Eduardo collaborated as a pianist, composer and arranger with several groups from different musical universes, such as: Couple Coffee, Rumos Ensemble, Coro Infantil e Juvenil from the Gregorian Institute of Lisbon, Solistas de Lisboa, Companhia de Ópera de Setúbal, Colorado All State Choir, among others. Eduardo Jordão, since 2002, teaches piano, chamber music and accompaniment/improvisation at the Setúbal’s Conservatory from wich he belongs to the directive board.
Fernando Loura
Fernando Loura is currently a young pianist at Opernhaus Zürich, in Switzerland.
He studied opera in Italy (Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence) and in England (National Opera Studio in London), where he performed in concerts with the English National Opera, Opera North in Leeds and Welsh National Opera in Cardiff.
As a répétiteur, he worked in productions at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos (Lisbon), Opera Vlaanderen (Antwerp), Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), Opernhaus Zürich and Bühnen Bern.
He is a pianist accompanist for the Belvedere Singing Competition 2024 and the Lousada International Lyric Singing Competition.
Before dedicating himself to opera, he completed a Master’s degree in Piano Performance at the Conservatori del Liceu in Barcelona and a Bachelor’s degree at ESML in Lisbon.
Francisco Sassetti
Born in Lisbon, he studied piano at the Conservatório Nacional, at the Escola
Superior de Música, in the class of pianist Tânia Achot, and at the College Conservatory of Music at the University of Cincinnati (USA). He was a scholarship holder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and the University of Cincinnati. He also won an award at the 1st Concurso da Juventude Musical Portuguesa (1988).
He began his career as a concert pianist at the Teatro de S. Luíz in Lisbon in 1988, and since then, he has performed both as a soloist and as part of chamber music ensembles across Portugal, as well as in Spain, Germany, France, Belgium, the USA, and Uruguay.
A significant portion of his career has been dedicated to accompanying singers. In this regard, he has worked with some of the finest portuguese singers, including Elsa Saque, Carlos Guilherme, Teresa Cardoso de Meneses, Sandra Medeiros, Sílvia Mateus, Armando Possante, Ana Ester Neves, Luís Rodrigues, and Isabel Alcobia, among many others.
He has recorded several times for Antena 2, with German singer Ute Lemper for the French film Aurelien, and has also released multiple CDs.
He is also a composer and has released two albums of original solo piano works: Home and Home-Felt Piano.
Since 1998, he has been an accompanist and teacher in the voice department at the
Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.
Michael Sikich
Michael Sikich is a pianist, song recitalist, and vocal coach based in Sweden, where he is on the music staff at the Gothenburg Opera. A native of Santa Barbara, California, he has performed across Europe and the United States at venues including the Barbican Hall, Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, LSO St. Luke’s, Cadogan Hall, St. Martin in the Fields, and on broadcasts for BBC Radio 3. He has been invited to perform song recitals at the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam as well as Opéra de Lyon and he made his BBC Proms debut in a recital of American song celebrating the centennial of Leonard Bernstein with mezzo-soprano Wallis Giunta.
Michael joined the Jette Parker Young Artists Programme at the Royal Opera House Covent Garden in 2020, where he was employed for two seasons as a member of the music staff. He was chief repetiteur for more than 12 productions, working with singers such as Lisette Oropesa, Pretty Yende, and Christian Gerhaher as well as conductors Antonio Pappano, Daniele Rustioni, Dan Ettinger and Constantin Trinks, among others.
Michael was winner of the grand prize Eugène Pannebakker Lied Duo Award together with mezzo-soprano Ema Nikolovska at the 53rd International Vocal Competition in ‘s-Hertogenbosch, Netherlands. He is a prizewinner of the International Helmut Deutsch Lied Competition, a semifinalist at the 2017 Wigmore Hall/Kohn Foundation International Song Competition, and winner of the piano accompaniment prize from the Guildhall School of Music & Drama in London, where he completed a postgraduate degree with Julius Drake.
Michael received his bachelors degree in solo piano from the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music under the instruction of Edward Auer and in addition to earning a postgraduate degree at the Guildhall School, he undertook further studies at the Kunstuniversität Graz in Austria with Julius Drake. He is a Samling Artist and an alumnus of the Solti Accademia, the Music Academy of the West, the Aspen Music Festival and School, the SongStudio Program at Carnegie Hall, the Franz Schubert Institute, and the Banff Centre.
Ricardo Martins
Ricardo Martins completed, in 2014, his Masters Degree in Music Teaching at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, under the supervision of Jorge Moyano and Miguel Henriques.
He has participated as an accompanying pianist in several masterclasses, as well as in workshops for co repetiteurs with João Paulo Santos, Claudio Desderi, Jory Vinikour and Paul McCreesh (ENOA courses). Other opera productions include Ohneama by João Guilherme Ripper, with Marcelo de Jesus (2016), and the Opera Atelier of the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa with Mozart’s The Magic Flute (2017-2018) and Don Giovanni (2018-2019), staged by Jorge Vaz de Carvalho and musical direction by Pedro Amaral. He also collaborated in the 2018-2019 season of the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos with Gluck’s Alceste, staged by Graham Vick and conducted by Graeme Jenkins, as well as the Festival ao Largo 2019 with the Orquestra Sinfónica Portuguesa and maestro Andrea Sanguineti.
He also participated in piano masterclasses with Galina Eguiazarova, Sequeira Costa, Miklos Spaniy, Fausto Neves, Roberto Turin, Artur Pizarro, Mikhail Markov, António Rosado and Arcadi Volodos.
Ricardo Martins also teaches as a Guest Assistant Professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. He frequently works with the Gulbenkian Choir as an accompanying pianist, and as a guest pianist with the Gulbenkian Orchestra.
As a soloist, he has played several recitals at the National Museum of Music, as part of the seasons “À tarde no Museu” (2016 and 2017) and “Músicas do Acervo” (2017, 2018 and 2019), as well as at the CGD Auditorium of the Instituto Superior de Economia e Gestão, as a part of the 40th anniversary of the Instituto Gregoriano de Lisboa.
He made his orchestra debut with Poulenc’s Piano Concerto, with the Orquestra Sinfónica da Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, and maestro Vasco Azevedo.
