About the group
Arte Minima
Founded in 2011 by Pedro Sousa Silva, dedicated to the music of the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with particular attention to the Portuguese repertoire of the period.
Direction
Pedro Sousa Silva — recorders and direction. Founder and artistic director since 2011.
The ensemble's working methods are based on models taken from academic research that seek to harness the Renaissance approach to study and musical interpretation, and to apply those tools to music-making in the twenty-first century. Its interpretative work is conducted directly from original source material without the mediation of modern transcriptions, and this philological perspective extends to all aspects of performance — theory, instruments, tuning — as part of an ongoing quest for a greater comprehension of the musical language of the past.
After a decade on the principal Portuguese stages, Arte Minima has consolidated an international presence with débuts in Madrid (Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro, 2024) and Helsinki (Aurore Festivaali, 2025), and its presentation in Naples (Fondazione Turchini, June 2025). Its discography includes In Splendoribus (2021), with unpublished works from Braga Cathedral and the Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória, and Francisco de Santa Maria — Missa O Beata Maria (2023, Pan Classics).
Arte Minima's albums have been the subject of dedicated programmes on BBC Radio 3, Radio France, Antena 2, SWR2 Kultur, ERT Trito Programma, Concertzender, LRT Klasika and WTJU 91.1 FM.
Musicians
Direction
Voices
Recorders
Recording credits
- Recording producers
- João Pedro d'Alvarenga, Pedro Sousa Silva
- Recording, editing, mixing & mastering
- Marco Conceição, Tomás Quintais, Pedro Sousa Silva
- Assistant producers
- Renata Lima, Elisabete Moreira, Moisés Maroto, Sára Siményi
- Music assistant
- Sofia Pimenta
- Executive producers
- Rita Tavares, Leonardo Patrício, Rosa Lopes Dias, Michael Sawall
- Instruments
- Recorders by Adrian Brown and Bob Marvin, after Gerolamo Salbrun and Bassano; mute cornett by Damien Bardonnet after Bassano
- Translations
- Pedro Braga Falcão, David Hackston, António Cucu
- Recorded at
- Igreja do Mosteiro de São Bento da Vitória, Porto · Museu Alberto Sampaio, Guimarães · Mosteiro de São Salvador, Areias de Vilar
A Música Secreta de Vicente Lusitano is funded by DGArtes, Programa Caixa Cultura, Fundação GDA and Cultura Norte, with the support of ESMAE — P.Porto, CESEM-P.Porto, PORTIC, Património Cultural I.P. and Antena 2.
Funded by
With the support of
