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The Portuguese counter-tenor, Tiago Simas, began his music studies at the Escola Luís António Maldonado Rodrigues, in Torres Vedras, where he studied singing with Susana Duarte. He concluded the Secondary Course of Gregorian Chant at the Instituto Gregoriano of Lisbon, in the class of Elsa Cortez. He ended his journey at this school by taking an Artistic Aptitude Test entirely dedicated to the study and interpretation of English song from the late 19th to the 20th century. Since 2020 he has been attending, simultaneously, the Singing Course and the Composition Course at the Escola Superior de Música in Lisbon, where he belongs to the Singing class of Armando Possante. As a Composition student, he studied with João Madureira and is currently studying with Sérgio Azevedo. Also because he dedicates himself to these two branches, he is constantly in contact with music from various historical periods and interprets, solo, a very diversified repertoire, which integrates music from early to contemporary.
Currently, Tiago Simas has been working together with the Ensemble São Tomás de Aquino and the Grupo Vocal Olisipo. Among participations as a soloist in various projects, the following stand out: O Sing Unto the Lord (1688) by Purcell, Magnificat by Francesco Durante/Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, such as In Exitu Israel (1753) and Dominus Regnavit (1737) by Mondonville. As an operatic singer, he played the role of Dritter Knabe (Third Boy) in W.A. Mozart's Die Zauberflöte (1791) and, recently, the role of Hexe (Witch) in Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel (1893). In choir or ensemble, he was part of such productions as Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina's Sicut lilium inter spinas (1584) and Missa Sicut lilium (1590); J.S. Bach's Cantata Wir müssen durch viel Trübsal, BWV 146 (1726); W.A. Mozart's Requiem (1791) and Great Mass in C Minor (1783); Gabriel Fauré's Requiem (1890); Benjamin Britten's A Ceremony Of Carols (1942) and Orff's Carmina Burana (1936), with La Fura dels Baus. Of particular note is his recent participation in the "Fiat Lux" album, recorded in 2021 with Grupo Vocal Olisipo, which presents, alongside Te Deum (2018) by Eurico Carrapatoso, the debut works Ode à Paz (2022), by Anne Vitorino by Almeida, and Três Poemas de Fernando Pessoa (2022), by Tiago Derriça. |
