Rui Lopes
Although Rui Lopes only started playing the bassoon at the age of 18, his musical temperament and virtuosity quickly received recognition and earned him numerous awards, including first prize at the prestigious Estoril International Music Competition. He is one of the most promising bassoonists of his generation and shares his great passion for music with concert audiences worldwide.

Rui Lopes has appeared as a soloist with the Zurich Symphony Orchestra, the Basel Symphony Orchestra, the Czech Chamber Orchestra, the Kremlin Chamber Orchestra, the Finnish National Opera, the Orquestra do Algarve, the Chamber Artists Orchestra, the Orquestra Filarmónica das Beiras, the Collegium Musicum Basel, the Camerata Antiqua de Curitiba, the Portuguese Symphony Orchestra and other orchestras. He regularly appears on stage with outstanding musicians, including Konstantin Lifschitz, Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Alina Pogostkina, Razvan Popovici, Maximilian Hornung, Nabil Shehata, Marcelo Nisinman, Dimitri Ashkenazy, Sebastian Manz, Ramon Ortega, Nicholas Daniel and Loïc Schneider. Lopes played at the Schleswig-Holstein Music Festival, the Bohuslav Martinu Festtage, the SoNoRo Festival, the Crusell Festival,

As solo bassoonist he has performed with the Lucerne Symphony Orchestra, the Orchester de Paris, the Zurich Chamber Orchestra, the Ensemble Modern Orchestra, the Basel Chamber Orchestra, the Festival Strings Lucerne and the Camerata Bern.

His interest in the Baroque and his enthusiasm for contemporary music led Rui Lopes from studying early music on historical instruments with Marc Vallon in Paris to the present, which he devoted himself to with Pascal Gallois and Pierre Boulez at the Lucerne Festival Academy; in this way he developed an unusually broad repertoire. He works with Capriccio Basel (early music) as well as with contemporary ensembles such as Music Factory and the Ensemble Laboratorium, of which he is a founding member. His love of Argentine tango and Portuguese fado often inspires his own distinctive arrangements.

Rui Lopes was born in Santa Maria da Feira, Portugal and lives in Basel with his Swiss wife and two sons. He studied with Hugues Kesteman at the Escola Artave and at the Porto Music Academy, with Sergio Azzolini at the Musik-Akademie Basel (soloist diploma with distinction) and with Marco Postinghel at the Richard Strauss Conservatory in Munich. He has taught bassoon and chamber music at the University of Aveiro (2006-2010) and the Conservatory Metropolitana (2010-2012) and teaches master classes. Lopes plays on a Peter de Koningh baroque bassoon 'after JH Eichentopf' and a modern bassoon Heckel 13227.