Patrícia Pinheiro grew up surrounded by stories. Influenced by her grandfather’s love of storytelling and Portugal’s oral singing traditions, she developed a keen ear for listening at an early age—music became a space of intimacy for her.

At the age of 21, she moved from Portugal to Germany and studied at the HfMDK Frankfurt. Since then, her artistic work has spanned orchestral practice, contemporary music, and open, interdisciplinary formats.

She has worked with, among others, the HR Symphony Orchestra, the MDR Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble Ulysses, the Ensemble Intercontemporain, the Klassische Philharmonie Bonn, the Anhaltisches Theater Dessau, the Mendelssohn Chamber Orchestra Leipzig, Ensemble Reflektor, and the Asambura Ensemble. Her work has taken her to festivals such as the Festival Manifeste (Paris), the Kunstfest Weimar, the Lucerne Festival, the Berliner Festspiele, and the Warsaw Autumn.

In addition to the classical concert context, she is particularly interested in formats at the intersection of music, improvisation, and electronics, for example in productions such as Falstaff at the Staatstheater Gießen and Solastalgia at the Schauspiel Frankfurt.

As part of Tarek Atoui’s Extended Playground at the GFZK Leipzig, she worked with instruments outside her own background, which expanded her practice beyond the oboe and shaped her playful approach to sound and performance.

Through the TONALI-LAB and later with support from the Orchesterstiftung, she developed her first solo project for oboe, *I would… if I could get out of my head*, in collaboration with the artist Chiara Stuto, which continues to be performed.

Patrícia was a fellow at the TONALI Stage Academy, where she developed À Mesa—a site-specific intervention in Portugal—and completed the International Ensemble Modern Academy with a scholarship from the Kunststiftung NRW. This year has been selected as scholar of TRANSIENT Academy and Concerto21.

Storytelling forms the core of her artistic work, through the oboe as well as through collaborative processes that open spaces for encounter, attention, and empathy.