“[…] bassist André Carvalho, whom you should get to know” - Nate Chinen in Take 5 | WBGO
André Carvalho is a Portuguese composer and bassist whose work moves between jazz, contemporary music, and film, always driven by a search for new sonic narratives. His music has been described as “both in bounds and out of this world” (AllAboutJazz), and The New York Times called him a bassist “you should get to know” (Nate Chinen).
Carvalho has performed at leading venues and festivals such as the Colors Jazz Festival (Paris), Cairo Jazz Festival, Jazz Festival Ljubljana, Blue Note (New York), Konzerthaus Berlin, and Casa da Música (Porto). He has collaborated with musicians including Chris Cheek, Will Vinson, and Tommy Crane, and has been recognized with the “Carlos Paredes Award” (2012), “Best Group” at the Bucharest International Jazz Competition (2011), and multiple grants from the GDA Foundation for recordings and international tours.
His scope extends beyond jazz: Carvalho toured with multi-Grammy winner Gilberto Gil in his opera Prelúdio, presented at the Barbican Centre (London) and Finlandia Talo (Helsinki), and has performed with conductors such as Gustavo Dudamel, Heinrich Schiff, and Franz Welser-Möst, as well as Fado legends Carlos do Carmo and Cristina Branco.
Recent discography highlights include the two-part cycle Lost in Translation (Outside in Music, 2021; Clean Feed Records, 2023), supported by the GDA Foundation, Antena 2, Companhia de Actores, and Teatro Municipal Amélia Rey Colaço, and the large-scale suite The Garden of Earthly Delights (2019), which was considered for the Grammys.
Film scoring has become a vital part of his career. His score for Atom & Void (dir. Gonçalo Almeida) was featured at Fantastic Fest (Austin) and Sitges (Spain), won “Best Music” at the Short Shorts Film Festival (Japan), and was nominated for Best Short at the Prémios Sophia 2025. In 2024, he received the “Best Original Music” award at the Planos Film Festival for Canto (dir. Guilherme Daniel). He was also a finalist at Oticons 2023 and the Berlin International Film Scoring Competition 2023, and received an Honorable Mention at the European Recording Academy’s Call to Scores (2022).
Carvalho holds degrees from the Manhattan School of Music and the University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna. Originally trained in Computer Science, he shifted to music at the Hot Club de Portugal and Academia de Amadores de Música before moving to the U.S. as a Fulbright grantee in 2014.
Moving between genres, languages, and worlds, André Carvalho seeks the unnamable: music as a space of discovery.
Photo by João Hasselberg
Photo by João Hasselberg
“I was destined to be a computer nerd. By the age of 5, I was playing video games created by my grandfather, and by 7, I was programming on my own. Breaking the rules and not settling was always part of it for me. After graduating with a degree in Computer Science at 21, I confronted my destiny and, for the first time, learned what a bass clef is.”
Artist Statement
My musical obsessions often circle around narrative and storytelling—pathways to expand the imagination and probe the depths of the human condition. I strive to create music that strikes with visceral intensity, yet always seek to temper that raw force with a sense of transcendence: a glimpse of something beyond, while remaining grounded in our fragile, all-too-human lives.
In recent years, my work has been shaped by encounters with other art forms. Of Fragility and Impermanence draws from reflections on the fleeting and delicate nature of existence, inspired by cinema and literature. Lost in Translation explores the mystery of untranslatable words, born from the nuances of language itself. Earlier, The Garden of Earthly Delights found its voice in the enigmatic visions of Hieronymus Bosch.
Each project is part of an ongoing search: to discover how music can converse with other arts, and how these dialogues might deepen our experience of complex emotions, impermanence, and the fragile beauty of being human.
Photo by João Hasselberg
