Classical Music programme is specially focused on two composers: the last quarter of 2007 will be dedicated to the work of Edvard Grieg, a Norwegian composer who died one hundred years ago; the first semester of 2008 will highlight the work of Ludwig van Beethoven in the framewok of a celebration of the famous Vienna concert performed on the 22nd of December 1808. Beethoven 2008 project will cross the programme of the forthcoming year with a piano cycle consecrated to the composer, consisting of five recitals to be performed in January, and the complete piano trios, to be performed in May.

This season, CCB will present two great oratorios: the Christmas Oratorio, in December and St. John Passion, in Mars, both by Johann Sebastian Bach, performed by the Akademie für Alte Musik Berlin and the King’s Consort. Along the season, soloists and conductors like Enrico Onofri, Christina Pluhar, Gaetano Nasillo of the baroque Orchestra Divino Sospiro, in residence at CCB, will perform several times; and OrchestrUtopica will return to CCB, as a resident orchestra, from January to July 2008.

April’s music programme will be entirely dedicated to the second edition of Music Days in Belém, devoted to “the pleasure of playing together". This year we propose an overview of chamber music, from court music to modern concert room and also on what was held in bourgeois saloons.

Jazz will be in the limelight with the following performances in the Main Auditorium: Chick Corea, Ahmad Jamal, Enrico Rava quintet and Dee Dee Bridgewater; from May onwards, Jazz at Thursdays will return to the Quadrante Cafeteria; and in July, CCB will promote the first Lisbon Jazz Summer School, with the presence of Portuguese and international musicians.

In May 2008, a Pina Bausch Festival, an initiative promoted in co-production with São Luiz Municipal Theatre, dominates the Dance programme. CCB will present two great productions of Pina Bausch’s company: Néfes, a 2005 creation, and Mazurka Fire, commissioned by Expo'98, returning to the Main Auditorium stage, ten years after its première. The presentation of Rosas company, led by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, the choreography of William Forsythe Impressing the Czar and Akram Khan together with the China National Ballet (in co-production with the Alkantara Festival) constitute another important moments of a season that still brings to CCB Rui Horta, Paulo Ribeiro & Leonor Keil, and Cláudia Nóvoa.

The Canadian stage director Robert Lepage opens the Theatre programme with The Dragons Trilogy; CCB will also present, for the first time in Portugal, one of the most famous Italian stage directors of this new generation, Emma Dante, in a cycle featuring three of her productions.

In July and August, the outside spaces of CCB are once again opened to the programmers’ creativity, in a project whose purpose is to allow visitors new experiences inside spatial diversity of the compound: it’s CCB Inside Out.

PEDRO CARNEIRO ASSOCIATED ARTIST OF THE 2007-2008 SEASON

Mr Pedro Carneiro, a distinguished percussionist, studied piano, cello and trumpet since the age of five. He was a scholarship student of the Gulbenkian Foundation at the Guildhall School and Drama, where he studied with David Corkhill (spandrels and percussion) and Alan Hazeldine (conducting). He also studied, as a scholarship student of the Acanthes Centre, with the percussionist Sylvio Gualda and later in London, with the marimbist Leigh Howard Stevens. Since 2002, he studies conducting with Emilio Pomàrico at the Accademia Internazionale della Musica in Milan.

Now at the age of 31, he has performed the world première of over 80 works, and he works regularly with a wide range of acclaimed musicians, orchestras and leading composers from the most diverse musical fields, such as the harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka; pianists Valentina Lisitsa, Michael Houston and Artur Pizarro; the Arditti, Chilingirian, Shanghai, New Zealand and Cuarteto Latinoamericano string quartets; composers Steve Reich, James Dillon, Emmanuel Nunes.

The Associated Artist brings the season diverse interventions: Pedro Carneiro’s contribution begins with the season’s première, on the 13th of September, at the Main Auditorium. In his triple role as instrumentalist, conductor and composer, he will be conducting a new orchestra, the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra (OCP), created and directed by him. Pedro Carneiro returns to the CCB in October for a concert with the Arditti Quartet. Already in 2008, Pedro Carneiro receives a green card in order to create a performance entirely conceived by him. In April he will be performing in Music Days at Belém, as a soloist and also with the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra (OCP).

Finally, on July 2008, the Associated Artist will conclude his participation in the CCB’s season, performing during the weekend dedicated to Portuguese Music, Now.