Board Member
Juan Carlos Maggiorani is a Venezuelan violinist and the artistic director of the Portuguese Sistema programme, Orquestra Geração.
As a violinist, Juan has performed with some of the most respected musicians of our age at some of the most important concert halls in Europe and has been described as a "singular case of excellence in the Portuguese musical scene" (Diana Ferreira, Público, 2010).
At the start of his career, he studied at the Academia Nacional Superior de Orquestra in Lisbon. In 2004, he then received a Carolina and Albeniz Foundation scholarship for the Escuela Superior de Musica Reina Sofia in Madrid and went on to study there under professor Zakhar Bron before moving to the Instituto Internacional de Musica de Cámara de Madrid and the supervision of professor Rainer Schmidt (Hagen Quartet) in 2006. In 2012, he completed his master’s diplomas in performance and education, obtaining professional certification from the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa. And, in 2016, he was declared a violin specialist by the Instituto Politénico de Castelo Branco. Juan has also studied in El Sistema’s Núcleo de Rinconada at the Simón Bolivar Conservatory and was a member of numerous Venezuelan orchestras before moving to Europe.
As an educator and conductor, Juan has collaborated with some of the biggest names in contemporary orchestral music and has participated in joint rehearsals with a number of renowned orchestras. He also served as an orchestral instructor on many different projects, working with organisations and projects such as the Xiquitsi Project (Mozambique), Superar Suisse, Young Leaders Orchestra (UK), Jove Orquestra de Figueres (Catalonia) and EL Sistema Sverige (at the Swedish and SEYO summer camps in Vienna, Istanbul, Milan and Grecce).
Snce 2007, Juan has been part of the Orquestra Geração project. As well as being the artistic director, regional pedagogic coordinator and principal conductor of the Orquestra Municipal Geração da Amadora, he teaches the violin and leads various sectionals and the orchestra as a whole. Through his work for the project, Juan is also proud to have been part of the team that was awarded the National Teachers Prize (Ministry of Education, Portugal) for innovation in 2010 and received the European Commission’s award for being one of the 50 best social projects in the whole European Union in both 2013 and 2014.
Juan is also a founding member of the Matosinhos String Quartet, which has been resident at the Matosinhos City Hall since 2007 and is the recipient of several prizes. In the 2014/2015 season, the quartet was awarded the 2nd prize at the I Concurso Internacional de Música de Câmara Cidade de Alcobaça and selected as a Rising Star by the European Concert Hall Organisation. In 2017, it was given the gold medal of Matosinhos and bestowed with the honour of the city.
Additional prizes which Jan has been involved in winning include the 1st prize in the chamber music division of the Prémio Jovens Músicos competiton in Lisbon, a prize for the best quartet at the Escuela Superior de Música Reina Sofia by Quenn Sophie of Spain and the 1st prize and a special prize for the best Mozart interpretation at the VI Certámen de Musica de Cámara Rotary Club in Santander (Spain).
Information valid as of autumn 2017.