Maria Ines Guimaraes

Maria Inês Guimarães is a Brazilian pianist, composer, and educator known for her many recordings of works by Brazilian composers. Also a respected musicologist, she reconstructed an important collection of works by the 18th century Brazilian composer Lobo de Mesquita. Guimarães was born in Uberaba, Brazil, in 1959, and she began her music education at the Instituto Musical Uberabense. After her graduation in 1978, she studied with Eudoxia de Barros and Magda Tagliaferro, followed by enrollment at the University of São Paulo from 1984 to 1987. Guimarães relocated to Paris in 1988 and became a student at the Paris Normal School of Music. Her improvisation professors were Harry Swift, Jean-Marie Machado, and Bruno Wilhelm, and she studied piano with Anna-Stella Schic and Francoise Parrot-Hanlet. Guimarães released her debut album, Alma Brasileira, in 1993, which received enthusiastic reviews from critics. This was followed by Nepomuceno: Piano Works in 1994, and Henrique Oswald: Piano Music in 1995. Seeking further refinement, she earned her doctorate in musicology from Sorbonne University, Paris in 1996, under the guidance of Edith Weber, Serge Gut, and Nicolas Meeus. Her doctoral thesis on the music of Brazilian composer Lobo de Mesquita led to the reconstruction of Mesquita’s Dominica in Palmis and a recording of the work by Musica Antiqua and the Henri Duparc Choir. Since 1999, she's taught at the Conservatoire d’Antony in France as a professor of piano and free improvisation. Guimarães joined the Paris Choro Club in 2001, and she created the annual Festival International de Choro in 2005. It was also around this time that she published several collections of original compositions, arrangements, and pedagogical pieces, such as Danses et oiseaux du Brésil from 2003. She also performs in choro ensembles Ilustrando o CHORO, Duo Asymétrie with Brenda Ohana, and the Choro Quartet with Paul Mindy, Bruno Wilhelm, and Dominique Muzeau. Additionally, she began composing incidental music for the Compagnie Le Feu Follet children’s theater in 2012. She released Norte e Sul with the Choro Quartet in 2014, Contrepoint: Villa-Lobos, Kurtag in 2018, and Ruídos de Costura in 2024. Guimarães remains very active in her roles as professor, performer, and artistic director of the Choro Festival.
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