Cistermúsica Frontiers with multiple arts revolving around music

The Cistermúsica season continues until December with ten concerts in various venues around the city

The Cistermúsica Fronteiras cycle returns to Alcobaça from October to December with multiple proposals in which music, with a special focus on contemporary creation, intersects with photography, literature, poetry, and painting. The programme reaffirms music as its central axis, in creative dialogue with other forms of artistic expression.

‘Fronteiras is the moment in the Cistermúsica season dedicated to contemporary creation, where music is the driving force behind dialogue with the arts and languages of our time,’ says Director-General José Rafael Rodrigues, who also highlights the different venues in the city that host these shows, from the historical heritage site of the Monastery of Alcobaça to various cultural facilities such as the Wine Museum, the Armazém das Artes and the more recent Panorama - Multiusos de Alcobaça.

Immersive and daring musical experiences

Opening the programme, the Portuguese Symphonic Band and the Contratempus Quartet present the unique creation Delícia de Morangos com Chantilly (Strawberry Delight with Whipped Cream), a multimedia scenic cantata resulting from a collaborative libretto between man (Edward Ayres d'Abreu) and technology (partly written by ChatGPT). A work for five soloists and wind orchestra, with music by Pedro Lima, an award-winning young composer who has established himself as one of the most active and challenging voices in contemporary music.

One of the highlights will be the exhibition-concert Reflexos de Macondo (Reflections of Macondo), which combines literature and photography with music, paying tribute to Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude. Colombian photographer Oscar Perfer presents portraits inspired by the timeless characters of the novel, displayed on a large scale among the audience. At the piano, María José de Bustos performs works by Schubert, Brahms, Debussy, Chopin and Ravel.

Still in the realm of literature, the show Sinédoque revisits the work of 20th and 21st century Portuguese poets such as Alexandre O'Neill, Ruy Belo and Margarida Vale de Gato. Poems to be heard in the voice of actor Ivo Canelas, accompanied by João Vasco on the piano, in a project that has been presented with great success in several countries.

In turn, painting is evoked with a symphonic concert dedicated to Amadeo de Souza-Cardoso. The Alcobaça Symphonic Band performs Luís Carvalho's Sinfonia Amadeo, a work inspired by six paintings by the artist, in a programme that celebrates Portuguese modernism and closes the Cistermúsica 2025 season.

The cycle also pays tribute to French saxophonist Jean-Marie Londeix (1932–2025) with the Art'Ventus Quintet, conducted by Alberto Roque. The concert includes Suite d'après Jean-Philippe Rameau, a work by György Ligeti, and a Portuguese premiere by Canadian composer Gary Kulesha (1954– ).

The vocal ensemble LEIDA combines contemporary creation with the acoustic space where it performs, using rooms with long reverberation, which makes the Refectory of the Monastery of Alcobaça a venue of choice for this performance. This project, which aims to reflect on sound and space, is, according to Mariana Dionísio — mentor of the project and musical director of the ensemble —, “designed to function as an instrument (...) with several heads. LEIDA is a kind of Hydra that constantly disobeys me and with which I have to collaborate.”

Make way for jazz and improvisation

The Fronteiras programme also brings the Hot Club de Portugal Jazz Orchestra to Alcobaça with the programme Impermanência(s), exploring the boundaries between improvisation and written composition, between improvised music and contemporary classical music.

At the close of Fronteiras, in addition to the performance by the Alcobaça Symphonic Band, we will have two big names in Portuguese jazz: Carlos Bica Quarteto, presenting the album 11:11, and Mário Laginha with a programme in tribute to Carlos Paredes, on the occasion of the guitarist's centenary. Both shows will take place at Panorama - Multiusos de Alcobaça, in partnership with this new cultural space.

Organised by ABA - Banda de Alcobaça Associação de Artes, Cistermúsica Fronteiras is supported by the Portuguese Republic - Culture / Directorate-General for the Arts, with the strategic partnership of the Municipality of Alcobaça and the institutional partnership of Museus e Monumentos de Portugal, EPE /Mosteiro de Alcobaça.