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Paulo do Nascimento Brito (born 1987 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian composer and
pianist. He grew up in the United States and has also lived in France and Ukraine. Having
played the piano since the age of five, he began composing at fifteen. He received his musical
training and liberal arts education in Kiev, Paris, New York, and Chicago.
Paulo is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Chicago, where he studies with award-
winning composers Anthony Cheung and Marta Ptaszynska while writing and performing his
music. Prior to graduate school, he pursued an interdisciplinary path. First, at the Kiev
Conservatory, he devoted his focus equally to study of the piano, theory and
composition. Subsequently, aspiring to write opera, he pursued a B.A. in Classics and German
Literature at Columbia University that gave him a firm grasp of its cross-disciplinary intricacy.
In his recent projects Paulo unites not only different artistic disciplines but also different cultural
traditions. The Legend of the White Snake (2015) is a three-act, evening-length ballet with a
libretto that he based on several literary sources for the Chinese tale of the White Snake. He
has also adapted a solo piano version for himself to perform. Both scores are informed by
traditional Chinese music, which Paulo further explores in "Viola chinesa": Three Poems of
Camilo Pessanha (2016). This is a "distillation" in music for piano and violin of texts by the
major poet of Portuguese Symbolism, which was recently awarded a UChicago Arts Grant to
fund its première and recording. Camilo Pessanha is again featured in Paulo's latest
piece Romanza ed Elegia, a song cycle for soprano and piano (a version with orchestra is also
planned) that sets one of Pessanha's translations of classical Chinese poetry alongside Arthur
Rimbaud's "Vowels".
Visit his website at: www.paulodnbrito.com
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