João Carlos Martins occupies a unique place in the Brazilian musical scene, having been considered one of the greatest interpreters of Bach of the twentieth century by international criticism, from which he recorded the complete work for keyboard.
He was born in São Paulo on 1940 and began his piano studies at the age of eight with Professor José Kliass. At thirteen he began his career in Brazil and eighteen abroad.
His Carnegie Hall concerts, after her twenty-first year debut in a performance sponsored by Eleanor Roosevelt, have always sold out.
His recordings have often been among the best-selling, and newspapers such as The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Los Angeles Times have always devoted stories enthusiastic about his artistic personality. As a pianist, he was the only one to record J.S.Bach's masterpiece for keyboards, in a work recorded on 22 CDs, in 1998.
He left the stage definitively as a pianist in the year 2002 due to physical problems.
He is the only Brazilian musician who has had his life recorded by European filmmakers twice, the first film, Martin's Passion, directed by Irene Langman, already attended by more than one and a half million people in Europe and winner of several international festivals, and Rêverie by Belgian filmmakers Johan Kenivé and Tim Herman.
Twelve years ago he began his studies of regency. He performed successfully in London, Paris and Brussels as guest conductor, impressing on his performances the same dynamics he played as a pianist.
Thirteen years ago he founded Bachiana Filarmônica and developed a work with adolescents through his Bachiana Jovem. He idealized the Bachiana Foundation in 2006, whose theme is art and sustainability. In 2010 the orchestras were unified and form today the Bachiana Philharmonic SESI-SP.
Today, at the age of 79, he built a solid career with his orchestra, which was the first Brazilian orchestra to perform in January 2007 at Carnegie Hall, repeated in 2008.
João Carlos and his Bachiana returned to New York in 2009, 2010 and 2011, this time at Lincoln Center, once again taking the name of Brazil to international audiences.
In 2011, they performed at the Broward Center in Florida and returned to the Lincoln Center in New York, where they invited rhythm artists from the Vai-Vai samba school, showing the influence of African rhythms on the formation of Brazilian musical identity through works by Villa -Lobos, Guerra Peixe and Mateus Araujo. It was the first time in history that percussionists from a group played in these boxes.
In 2013 João Carlos Martins returned to New York, this time in front of The Saint Luke's Orchestra, in a memorable concert at the Metropolitan Museum, with repertoire entirely dedicated to J.S.Bach.
In the official seasons of the Bachiana Philharmonic, he developed countless actions of appreciation and democratization of concert music, as in 2013, in which each concert presented unpublished works by young Brazilian composers, he presented to Brazilian audiences young violinists of incredible talent Lucas Farias and Guido Sant'Anna, at the time with 12 and 9 years respectively, among others.
In its seasons, the Bachiana Philharmonic, which has already reached live about 14 million people, also counted on invited guests of international reputation, such as Pinchas Zukerman, Robert Levin, Amanda Forsyth and William Bennett.
Starting in 2014, LC Barreto along with Globo Filmes began the project of a feature film about the life of João Carlos Martins, which was completed in 2017. IN 2018 he beguns his most ambitious musical project - Orchestrating Brazil, which aims to form a thousand orchestras scattered in small Brazilian cities, surrounding it in the form of a heart. This project started in the State of São Paulo - Orquestrando São Paulo, and in just over two months already has 50 orchestras in cities with less than 30,000 inhabitants. Today he already have more than 200 in this project.
The pianist
"A man born to do great things at the piano"
Washington Post
"One of the most important pianists in the world ..."
The New York Times
"First there was Glenn Gould ... Now there's João Carlos Martins, a Brazilian pianist whose Life story can be even more fascinating."
New Yorker Magazine
"The most exciting modern Bach piano performer to emerge from Glenn Gould."
Boston Globe
The maestro
"Martins seems possessed, free, hypnotizing in a demonic way. Your interpretations are glowing. "
Le Figaro