Julio Machado

      I was born in the city of Rio de Janeiro, and I was fortunate to have great names in music involved in my artistic training. I attended the Villa-Lobos Music School in the 80’s and, in 1990, the UFRJ Music School, where I met friends among the most talented musicians of my generation.

      Alongside the pianist and, above all, unparalleled artist, Luiz Henrique Senise, I was able to unveil the ways that, from the understanding of the musical text, lead to a technical easiness and full achievement of a musical piece. I have observed, from personal experience and also from my colleagues, that a mechanical study of pianistic technique, if not harmful to the artist’s soul (and I believe it is), is totally unnecessary for the performance of any pianistic work.

      At UFRJ, I also had the honor of having the pianist Miriam Grosman as a teacher, who has an unusual artistic astuteness, where few words or few minutes at the piano were enough for her to open a world of new ideas and possibilities. Instead of the easy task of restricting my interpretive freedom and dictating my own vision (the crime committed by most teachers), she offered me a broad horizon of possibilities, which I took advantage of every moment.

      Being always eager to hear good musical ideas, I was a frequent guest of concerts and master classes, and I could hear and be heard by pianists such as Arnaldo Cohen, Olga Kiun, Luiz Carlos de Moura Castro (USA), Homero Magalhães, Frederick Moyer (USA), Mauricy Martin, Dominique Merlet (France), Olinda Alessandrini, Gayane Sharluyan (Russia-Spain), Heitor Alimonda, and Frank Weinstock (USA), among others.

      I have participated in piano competitions as well. Being always awarded among the first places, I also competed in the “Artlivre”, “Paulo Giovanini”, “Lorenzo Fernandez” and “Souza Lima” contests. In the “Governador Valadares” competition, I received from the pianist Fernando Lopes, the special prizes of best Brazilian and Romantic music from the entire contest for my interpretation of Sonata Breve (Lorenzo Fernandez) and Polonaise-Fantaisie op.61 (F. Chopin)

      With the pianist Fernanda Machado I finished refining my taste for teaching, which began with my piano monitoring at UFRJ. We started the PianoClass in 1998 with the desire to become a reference in the teaching of piano and art. In addition to countless master classes and courses at UFPel, I offered alone or with the participation of Fernanda, a master class at UDESC, a lecture for the graduate program at the Brazilian Conservatory of Music of Rio de Janeiro and for the undergraduate program at UFSM – together with a recital, combining the teaching activity with the pianist one.

      In Istanbul, I performed with the pianist Fernanda Machado (PianoClass Duo) a recital and a master class offered by the Mimar Sinan Fine Art University. The master class, with a roomful of people, had the participation of excellent students from that university. In Amsterdam, we gave a lecture entitled “The Composer’s Text through the Performer’s Mind and Soul,” in a series of events organized by the prestigious Triple Nine Society, where we had the special participation from the singer and pianist Anne-Laure Jaïn.