Ars Luminae represents classical soloists, chamber ensembles, a symphony orchestra and a period-instrument ensemble, and books them for concert halls, festivals, cultural institutions and municipal seasons across Europe and beyond.
This page is written for the person who has a slot to fill and a budget to justify. It sets out what each artist plays, what formations are available, what the hall has to supply, and what makes a programme from this roster different from one you could book anywhere else.
We are based in Portugal. That is not incidental — it is the reason we can offer Portuguese and Iberian repertoire that most international agencies do not carry, alongside the standard concert canon.
What you can book
Solo recital
Piano recitals from Kristina Miller, Iván Martín, Filipe Raposo and Ana Beatriz Ferreira; violin recital with piano from Lana Trotovšek; guitar duo recital from Duo Melis. Typical recital programmes run 70 to 90 minutes with an interval, and can be shortened to a single-set festival slot.
Chamber music
Trio Douro performs the piano trio repertoire — Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Arensky, Rachmaninoff. Duo Melis plays two-guitar repertoire from the baroque to the present. Individual artists on this roster also combine into ad hoc chamber formations: Lana Trotovšek and Ana Beatriz Ferreira have recorded together, and violin-and-piano or clarinet-and-piano programmes can be built to a theme.
Concerto with orchestra
All four pianists, Lana Trotovšek and clarinettist António Saiote are available as concerto soloists with your orchestra. Iván Martín and António Saiote are also conductors, which makes a play-direct or a soloist-plus-conductor engagement possible from a single booking. If you need the orchestra as well, Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa tours internationally.
Voice, opera and oratorio
Inês Simões (spinto soprano) and Rui de Luna (baritone) sing opera, oratorio and concert repertoire. Inês Simões is a specialist in contemporary and newly commissioned work; Rui de Luna’s core is the Mozart and Italian repertoire. Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa produces opera as well as symphonic concerts.
Baroque with period instruments
Concerto de’ Cavalieri, directed by Marcello Di Lisa, performs seventeenth and eighteenth-century repertoire on period instruments. Duo Melis also performs on nineteenth-century period guitars. Ars Luminae books Concerto de’ Cavalieri in Portugal and Spain; for other territories we will put you in touch with the ensemble’s own management.
The artists
Piano
Kristina Miller — Russian-German pianist, born in Moscow in 1986. She won first prize at the Berlin International Piano Competition in 1999 and second prize in St Petersburg in 2000, and was awarded the Russian Ministry of Culture’s prize for artistic development. She studied at the St Petersburg State Conservatory, won the Steinway Piano Award of the Munich Steinway House in 2006, and took a Master of Music with Distinction under Gerhard Oppitz in Munich in 2012 and a second Master’s in Vienna under Johannes Kropfitsch in 2015. She has appeared as soloist with the Vienna Chamber Orchestra, the Israel Camerata Jerusalem, the Lithuanian Chamber Orchestra and the Recreation Grosses Orchester Graz, and as a chamber musician with Daniel Müller-Schott, Pierre Amoyal and Danjulo Ishizaka. Her first CD was released on Naxos in 2008 with Nicolas Koeckert. She made her Berliner Philharmonie debut in November 2017. Worldwide booking.
Iván Martín — Spanish pianist and conductor, born in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. He plays with most Spanish orchestras and with the London Philharmonic, Berliner Konzerthausorchester, Wiener Kammerorchester, Orchestre de Paris, Helsinki Philharmonic, Sinfonia Varsovia and São Paulo Symphony, among others. He has recorded for Warner Music and Sony Classical — programmes devoted to Antonio Soler, Mozart, Schröter and Beethoven — and appears on a Deutsche Grammophon release with the composer Joan Valent. His recent chamber album with Natalia Lomeiko and Yuri Zhislin received five stars from BBC Music Magazine. He has premiered works by Cristóbal Halffter, Benet Casablancas, Antón García Abril and Michael Nyman, founded the Galdós Ensemble, and has been chief conductor of the Burgos Symphony Orchestra since the 2019/20 season. Worldwide booking.
Filipe Raposo — Portuguese pianist, composer and orchestrator. He began at the National Conservatory of Lisbon, holds a degree in Composition from the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa and a master’s in Jazz Piano Performance from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm. He has performed at the Gulbenkian Foundation, the CCB, Bozar, the Brucknerhaus, the Opéra de Rouen and the Sala São Paulo. He wrote the opera “As Cortes de Júpiter” (2022, on Gil Vicente, directed by Ricardo Neves-Neves) and won an award at the 2025 Málaga Film Festival for the score of Lo Que Queda de Ti. Since 2004 he has been resident pianist for silent film accompaniment at the Cinemateca Portuguesa, and has composed and recorded scores for its DVD editions of Portuguese silent film — work that makes him a distinctive booking for a cinema-and-live-music programme. His Art of Song series (When Baroque Meets Jazz, 2020; Between Sacred and Profane, 2023) sits deliberately across the classical and jazz repertoires. Worldwide booking.
Ana Beatriz Ferreira — Portuguese pianist, and the artist to talk to about Portuguese repertoire. She completed a PhD in Piano Performance at Cardiff University on a full scholarship, after a Bachelor’s and Master’s at the Royal College of Music in London with Ruth Nye MBE, Gordon Fergus-Thompson and Dina Parakhina. She won first prize at the Lopes-Graça Competition and four Merit and Excellence Prizes from the Eugénio de Almeida Foundation. She has appeared as soloist with the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa, Filarmonia das Beiras, the Maia Chamber Orchestra and the Cardiff University Symphony Orchestra. In 2024 she released a CD of the complete works of Joly Braga Santos for solo piano and for violin and piano, recorded with the violinist Lana Trotovšek; she had premiered the complete solo piano works in Cardiff, and toured Portugal with Braga Santos’s Piano Concerto alongside the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa under Osvaldo Ferreira. She opened the Piano City festival in Lisbon in September 2024. The Classical Source called her “a truly superb interpreter”. Management and worldwide booking.
Strings
Lana Trotovšek — Slovenian violinist, based in London. She made her debut in 2012 with the Mariinsky Theatre Orchestra under Valery Gergiev, toured in 2014 with the Moscow Soloists and Yuri Bashmet, and in 2016 played Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 with the London Symphony Orchestra under Gianandrea Noseda. She has performed at the Wigmore Hall, the Vienna Konzerthaus, the Teatro La Fenice and the Concertgebouw, and at the Rheingau, Aix-en-Provence, Santander, Dubrovnik and Aldeburgh festivals. She received the Prešeren Award, Slovenia’s highest university award for the arts, in 2005, and was a member of the Greenwich Piano Trio and the Badke String Quartet, with which she won the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. She is a professor at Trinity Laban Conservatoire and plays the 1750 Pietro Antonio dalla Costa violin. The Washington Post described her as “radiant”. Worldwide booking.
Trio Douro — piano trio formed in 2020 by three members of the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa: Carolina Frederico (violin, Brazil), Jed Barahal (cello, United States) and Vasco Dantas (piano, Portugal). Carolina Frederico trained at the Eastman School of Music and the University of Alberta and spent over fifteen years as concertmaster and soloist with the Teatro Nacional Cláudio Santoro Orchestra in Brasília. Jed Barahal trained at Juilliard and Yale, studied with Pierre Fournier and János Starker, was principal cellist of the São Paulo State Symphony and the Toulouse Capitol Orchestra, and has taught at ESMAE in Porto since 1993. Vasco Dantas graduated with First Class Distinction from the Royal College of Music and has played at Carnegie Hall, the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow and the Hong Kong City Hall. The trio has performed at the Salão Árabe of the Palácio da Bolsa, the Museu Romântico and the Museu Almeida Garrett in Porto, and the Teatro Maria Matos in Lisbon; in 2024 it gave more than twenty concerts at the Palácio da Bolsa and appeared at the Festival Algarve Music Series in Faro. In 2025 it toured Switzerland with the Concertos Mittelthurgau series. Core repertoire: Beethoven, Mendelssohn, Brahms, Arensky, Rachmaninoff.
Woodwind
António Saiote — Portuguese clarinettist and conductor, born in Loures. He studied in Paris with Guy Deplus and Jacques Lancelot under the auspices of the Gulbenkian Foundation, then in Munich with Gerd Starke, taking a Meisterdiplom with distinction; he holds a post-graduate qualification in Contemporary Music from the University of Alcalá de Henares and an MPhil in Orchestral Conducting from the University of Sheffield. As a soloist he has played with orchestras from the Gulbenkian Orchestra to the Zurich Symphony. He has conducted since 1998, has worked with every Portuguese orchestra, and is principal conductor and artistic director of the ESMAE Symphony Orchestra. He holds Honorary Membership of the International Clarinet Association, the Medal of Honour of the City of Loures, and, since 2023, the Commander’s Grade of the Order of Infante D. Henrique. He directs the Marcos Romão International Clarinet Meeting. He works in Spanish, Italian, French, German, Polish and English, which matters for masterclass and residency programmes. Management and worldwide booking.
Voice
Inês Simões — Portuguese spinto soprano, and a specialist in contemporary and newly written work. She has sung the world premieres of A Canção do Bandido by Nuno Côrte-Real (Teatro Nacional de São Carlos with Teatro da Trindade), Play by Jamie Man (Gulbenkian Foundation), Tabacaria and Flores do Mal by Luís Soldado, and The Fisherman’s Brides by Lucie Treacher at the Tête-à-Tête Festival. More than ten works have been written for her voice — with orchestra, with piano or with electronics — commissioned by institutions including the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Miso Music. She made her Barbican Hall debut in Berg’s Wozzeck Suite under Sian Edwards, and her Gulbenkian debut in Handel’s Solomon alongside Iestyn Davies, returning the following season for Messiah. She has worked with Magnus Lindberg, Hannu Lintu and Paul McCreesh, and has appeared at the Oxford Lieder Festival and on BBC Radio 3’s In Tune. Worldwide booking.
Rui de Luna — Portuguese baritone, centred on the Mozart and Italian repertoire. He studied in Italy at the Morello Foundation with Claude Thiolas from 1988 to 1992, then in Savona with Claudio Desderi and Renata Scotto at the Renata Scotto Opera Company, and took further courses at the Royal College of Music and the Royal Academy of Music in London with Thomas Allen, Ralf Gothóni and Sherrill Milnes, and at the Paris Opera. He recorded his first album for BMG/RCA (RCA Gold Seal) in 1996. His stage and concert repertoire includes the Count, Leporello and Guglielmo, Don Giovanni, Escamillo, Amonasro, Germont and Marcello, together with the Mozart Requiem and Coronation Mass, the Verdi Requiem and Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. He created the lyric-popular programme “Alma Latina”, premiered in 2014 in the cloister of the Jerónimos Monastery in Lisbon, and premiered Camoneanas (2015) and Amelianas (2016) at the Casa de Bragança Foundation music festival in Vila Viçosa. Management and worldwide booking.
Guitar
Duo Melis — the Spanish guitarist Susana Prieto and the Greek guitarist Alexis Muzurakis, playing together since their 1999 debut at the International Guitar Festival of Volos. They have performed at the Berlin Philharmonie, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Tchaikovsky Hall in Moscow, the Megaron in Athens and the Merkin Concert Hall in New York. Their competition record includes first prize at the International Guitar Duo Competition of Frechen (1999), Montélimar and the “Mauro Giuliani” competition (2000), and the Leipzig chamber music duo/ensemble prize and the International Guitar Duo Competition of Paris (2001). They have played with the Berliner Symphoniker, the Neubrandenburger Philharmonie, the Bayerische Kammerphilharmonie and the National Orchestra of Thessaloniki under Leo Brouwer. Their repertoire runs from the baroque to Piazzolla, Ginastera and Brouwer, including their own transcriptions, and the concertos for two guitars by Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Roland Dyens, Brouwer and Vivaldi, plus a concerto written for them by Marek Pasieczny. They also perform on nineteenth-century period instruments. Both have taught at the Superior Academy of Music of Strasbourg since 2006, and are regularly booked for masterclasses alongside concerts. Worldwide booking.
Orchestra
Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa — founded in May 2016 by Osvaldo Ferreira and Augusto Trindade, and directed by Osvaldo Ferreira. The orchestra produces symphonic concerts and opera, and its players include prize-winners of national and international competitions and former members of the European Union Youth Orchestra. Guest soloists have included Ray Chen, Sayaka Shoji, Eldbjørg Hemsing, Mayuko Kamio, Miroslav Kultyshev, Pavel Gomziakov, Pavel Milyukov, Soyoung Yoon and Kristina Miller, alongside Portuguese soloists including Ana Beatriz Ferreira, Vasco Dantas, Horácio Ferreira and Raúl da Costa. Ars Luminae holds general management and worldwide booking. If you are programming a Portuguese season, an anniversary or a co-production, this is the ensemble to build it around.
Baroque and period instruments
Concerto de’ Cavalieri — Italian period-instrument ensemble directed by Marcello Di Lisa. It has performed at the Concertgebouw Amsterdam, the Musikverein Vienna, the Elbphilharmonie Hamburg, the Kölner Philharmonie, the Herkulessaal in Munich, the Theater an der Wien, the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid and the Centro Cultural de Belém in Lisbon, and at the Rheingau Musik Festival, Musikfest Bremen, the Schwetzinger SWR Festspiele, Grafenegg, Ambronay and the Festival de Radio France. It records for Sony Classical; its Baroque Project, a multi-volume series of world premiere recordings of forgotten eighteenth-century Italian opera, has reached its fifth volume and covers Alessandro Scarlatti, Pergolesi, Vivaldi and Albinoni. Gramophone has described the ensemble as “historically sensible and artistically stylish”. For an early music festival, the Baroque Project catalogue is the point: these are works no other ensemble is currently performing. Ars Luminae books Concerto de’ Cavalieri in Portugal and Spain only.
Iberian and Portuguese repertoire
Most international rosters offer the same forty composers. If your season needs a programme that is genuinely unfamiliar and still stands up musically, this is where we are useful.
Joly Braga Santos (1924–1988). Ana Beatriz Ferreira released the complete works for solo piano and for violin and piano in 2024, recorded with Lana Trotovšek, having given the first complete performance of the solo piano works in Cardiff. She has also toured his Piano Concerto with the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa under Osvaldo Ferreira. That means a Braga Santos strand can be programmed at three scales — recital, duo, or concerto with orchestra — with the performers who made the recording.
Antonio Soler (1729–1783). Iván Martín’s Soler recordings for Warner and Sony are a way into the Iberian keyboard repertoire that sits either side of Scarlatti’s Madrid years, and reads as a discovery to most audiences.
Joaquín Rodrigo and the guitar concertos. Duo Melis carry the two-guitar concerto repertoire — Rodrigo, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Brouwer, Dyens, Vivaldi — and a concerto written for them by Marek Pasieczny. With a period-instrument strand they also play nineteenth-century guitars.
Portuguese contemporary music. Inês Simões has had more than ten works written for her, several commissioned by the Gulbenkian Foundation and Miso Music, and has given the world premieres of operas by Nuno Côrte-Real, Luís Soldado, Jamie Man, Tiago Cutileiro and Lucie Treacher. If you are commissioning, or building a contemporary strand, she is the practical starting point.
Portuguese song and lyric repertoire. Rui de Luna’s Alma Latina, Camoneanas and Amelianas programmes sit between the concert and the lyric-popular repertoire, and travel well for institutional and commemorative programmes.
Programmes can be built around a composer, a centenary, a national commemoration or a theme. Tell us what the season is about and we will propose repertoire rather than simply confirm availability.
Booking, pianos and technical requirements
Formations and durations. Solo recital, duo, piano trio, guitar duo, voice with piano, concerto with orchestra, opera, and period-instrument ensemble. Recitals typically run 70 to 90 minutes with an interval; festival sets can be built to a single 45 to 60 minute block. Tell us the slot and we will propose a programme that fits it, rather than trimming one that does not.
Pianos. For a recital or a concerto the requirement is a full-size concert grand in good regulation, tuned to A = 440 Hz, tuned immediately before the rehearsal and again before the concert. For a long or demanding programme, and for any two-piano or piano-with-orchestra work, budget for a second tuning between rehearsal and performance. Tell us the make, model, year and last regulation date of your instrument at the enquiry stage — not after the contract. If your hall’s piano is marginal, say so early: hiring an instrument is a solvable problem in month nine and an emergency in week two. Individual piano riders are available on request for each artist.
Period instruments and pitch. Period-instrument programmes are not necessarily played at modern pitch, and if your venue supplies a harpsichord, chamber organ or continuo instrument it has to be tuned to the pitch the ensemble works at. Settle this in writing before the contract, together with who provides, transports, tunes and insures the keyboard instrument. Performing pitch and instrumentation are confirmed with the presenter on a case-by-case basis.
Strings and instrument transport. Lana Trotovšek plays a 1750 dalla Costa violin. Instruments of that class travel with the player, need an adjacent cabin seat on some routings, and need instrument insurance and, on non-EU routings, customs documentation. This is normal and manageable, but it has to be budgeted and scheduled, not improvised at the airport.
Stage, acoustics and amplification. Classical programmes on this roster are acoustic. Where a hall needs reinforcement, it should be transparent and minimal, with the artists consulted on the approach. For chamber formations, tell us the stage dimensions and the reverberation time you actually have; a piano trio in a dry 1 200-seat hall needs a different placement from the same trio in a stone chapel.
Regional and multi-date touring. Most of the economics of an international classical booking are in the routing. A single date from Lisbon to a regional venue in northern Europe carries the full travel cost; three or four dates in the same region over a week carries roughly the same travel cost divided by four. If you are a municipality, a cultural network or a regional festival circuit, talk to us about a shared routing with neighbouring programmers before you fix a date. It is usually the difference between an artist you can afford and one you cannot.
Masterclasses, residencies and outreach. Several artists teach at conservatoire level — António Saiote at ESMAE, Lana Trotovšek at Trinity Laban, Ana Beatriz Ferreira at Cardiff University, Susana Prieto and Alexis Muzurakis at the Superior Academy of Music of Strasbourg. A masterclass, school session or open rehearsal attached to a concert is straightforward to arrange and often unlocks education or outreach funding that the concert alone does not.
Frequently asked questions
When should we approach you about an orchestral or opera project?
Recitals and chamber concerts can often be placed inside a season, but projects involving the Orquestra Filarmónica Portuguesa, an opera production or a period-instrument ensemble need longer — the orchestra’s own calendar, chorus and soloist availability, instrument transport and, for non-EU territories, visas all have to line up. For those, start the conversation as early as you can in your planning cycle; for a soloist recital, considerably less notice is workable. If you have a season slot in mind, an early conversation costs nothing.
What formations can we book, and can they be combined?
Solo recital, duo, piano trio, guitar duo, voice with piano, concerto soloist with your orchestra, full symphony orchestra, opera, and baroque ensemble on period instruments. Artists on this roster also combine into chamber formations built for a specific programme — Lana Trotovšek and Ana Beatriz Ferreira have recorded together, and violin-and-piano, clarinet-and-piano and voice-and-piano programmes can be assembled around a theme. Tell us the shape of the evening rather than the name of the format.
What are the piano requirements, and who is responsible for tuning?
A full-size concert grand in good regulation, tuned to A = 440 Hz, tuned immediately before the rehearsal and again before the concert; a further tuning between rehearsal and performance for long or demanding programmes. Tuning is the presenter’s responsibility and cost, and should be carried out by a technician the hall trusts. Send us the make, model, year and last regulation date with your enquiry, and if there is a known problem — a heavy action, a weak treble, a pending rebuild — tell us then rather than later. Individual artists may have specific preferences, which come with the technical rider. Individual piano riders are available on request for each artist.
Do the artists play at baroque pitch, and what does our venue need to supply?
Period-instrument programmes may be performed at a historical pitch lower than modern A = 440. If your venue is supplying a harpsichord, chamber organ or other continuo instrument, it has to be tuned to the pitch the ensemble uses, by a technician who works with historical temperaments. Confirm the pitch, the temperament, and who provides, transports, tunes and insures the instrument in writing before the contract is signed. Performing pitch and instrumentation are confirmed with the presenter on a case-by-case basis.
Can you build a programme around a theme, an anniversary or a specific composer?
Yes, and it is usually the more productive conversation. We work with artistic directors on repertoire rather than only on availability — including Portuguese and Iberian repertoire that is not on other agencies’ lists: the complete Joly Braga Santos piano and violin works, Antonio Soler, the two-guitar concerto repertoire, and Portuguese contemporary music written for these performers. Bring us in at the planning stage, with the theme and the constraint, and we will propose the programme.
We are a regional venue with a limited budget. Is an international booking realistic?
Often, yes — if you do not book alone. The travel cost of bringing an artist from Portugal is largely fixed, so it is the number of dates that determines whether the economics work. Municipalities, regional networks and neighbouring festivals that coordinate a shared routing across a week can present the same artists at a fraction of the per-concert cost of a single isolated date. If you are the only venue in your area programming classical music, tell us — we can often find the other dates.
Talk to us
Tell us the date, the venue, the capacity and what you have in mind, and we will come back with availability and a fee. If you are still shaping the season, that is a better time to write, not a worse one.
Email: info@arsluminae.com
Phone / WhatsApp: (+351) 915 166 826
Languages: Portuguese, English, Spanish, French
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