Born in Santo Tirso in the year 2000, João Álvares Abreu began his musical journey at the age of 12 at ARTAVE. He then continued his studies with Nobuko Imai and Francien Schatborn at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in 2022.
Álvares Abreu has participated in masterclasses led by eminent pedagogues such as Tatjana Masurenko, Veronika Hagen, Miguel da Silva, Walter Küssner, Sophie Arbuckle, and Pauline Sachse, among others.
He has been awarded several prizes, including the 1st prize ex-aequo at the Vasco Barbosa National String Competition (Lisbon, 2017), which gave him the opportunity to perform as a soloist with an orchestra at the Belém Cultural Center, in a live broadcast for Antena 2 radio. Also noteworthy is the 2nd prize ex-aequo at the Verão Clássico Festival (Lisbon, 2019).
On the orchestral front, João Álvares Abreu is a musician with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic Orchestra, under the musical direction of Karina Canellakis. In Portugal, he regularly collaborates with the Portuguese Chamber Orchestra, with which he performed Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante as a soloist under the baton of conductor Pedro Carneiro. He was a full member of the European Union Youth Orchestra in 2022. In 2023, he led the viola section of the Portuguese Youth Orchestra.
As a chamber musician, he has shared the stage with renowned musicians, including Eszter Haffner, Nobuko Imai, Pedro Carneiro, Filipe Pinto-Ribeiro, among others. He is a founding member of the Mankes Piano Quartet, an international ensemble based in Amsterdam with activities in the Netherlands, Portugal, and the USA.
João Álvares Abreu is a founding member and president of the board of FAMART - Artistic Platform, within which he serves in programming and artistic direction roles.
As a scholarship holder of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, he completed his master's degree in 2024 at the Haute École de Musique de Genève, under the guidance of professor Máté Szücs.
João Álvares Abreu is the founder and artistic director of the Cidnay Festival.
