Tuesday 21 October, 11.00, a.m. 
Church and Convent of Santa Clara 

Tuesday 21 October, 12.00, a.m. 
Church of St John the Evangelist (Colégio) 

Guided tour to the organs by João Vaz & Dinarte Machado 

A guided tour to the historic organs: the earliest and the most recent 

The Diocese of Funchal has had organs present in its liturgical services since the 15th century. Many are the instruments that have, since then, enriched the churches of the capital of Madeira, and many are those that, with the passage of time, have been lost. In spite of this, the city still possesses today a number of instruments that provide a panorama of its organs over the last three centuries. This tour will present the oldest instrument extant in Funchal - the organ of the Convent of Santa Clara, with Italian-Lusitanian characteristics of the first half of the 18th century – and the most recent - the great organ of the Church of St John the Evangelist (Colégio), built by Dinarte Machado and inaugurated in 2007. Some of the characteristics of the way the two instruments function will be explained, and works specially adapted for them will be played.

João Vaz

João Vaz

Born in Lisbon, João Vaz holds a doctorate in music and musicology from the University of Évora, where his thesis was entitled The organ works of Brother José Marques e Silva (1782-1837) and the end of the organ tradition in Portugal during the Ancien Regime, written under the supervision of Rui Vieira Nery. He holds a diploma in organ from the Higher School of Music of Lisbon, where he studied under Antoine Sibertin-Blanc, and from the Higher Conservatory of Music of Aragon in Zaragoza, where he studied with José Luis González Uriol, on a grant from the Gulbenkian Foundation, and also has a licentiate in architecture from the Technical University of Lisbon. He has been extremely active internationally, both as performer and teacher on organ courses. He has made over ten solo recordings, especially on historical Portuguese instruments. As performer and musicologist he has concentrated particularly on Portuguese sacred music, founding in 2006 the ensemble Capella Patriarchal, which he directs. His publications include articles that concentrate above all on Portuguese keyboard music, he currently teaches organ at the Higher School of Music in Lisbon, having also taught at the Gregorian Institute of Lisbon, the University of Évora and the School of Arts of the Portuguese Catholic University. Founder of the International Organ Festival of Lisbon in 1998, he is currently artistic director of the concert series that take place using the six organs of the Basilica of the Palace of Mafra (to whose restoration he was permanent consultant) and of the historical organ of the Church of São Vicente de Fora, in Lisbon (of which he became titular organist in 1997).

Dinarte Machado

Music has been part of Dinarte Machado’s life from an early age, and his first experience of pipe organs was at the age of twenty, on account of the urgent necessity of restoring the organ of the Church of St George, in the Northeast, on the island of S. Miguel, where he grew up. In 1987 he set up a workshop in Ponta Delgada, concentrating exclusively on organ building, undertaking his first restoration, that of the Church of Ribeira Grande, on S. Miguel. There followed other restorations in the Azores, Madeira, mainland Portugal and Spain, and to date he has carried out seventy-seven restorations of historical organs, the great majority of them Portuguese, from the second half of the 18th century, in which field he is a specialist. In the field of organ building, he has constructed some small instruments for study and has built nine larger organs, such as that made for the Church of the Colégio in Funchal. He published inventories of the organs of the Azores and Madeira. In 1993, he worked in Spain with the master organ builder Gerhard Grenzing, on the restoration of the historic organ of the Royal Palace in Madrid. At the International Congress in Mafra in 1994, he demonstrated the existence of differences between Spanish and Portuguese organs from the second half of the 18th century onwards. He was responsible for the restoration of the six organs of the Basilica of Mafra, built during the reign of King John VI, a set unique in the world, and which represents the apogee of Portuguese organ building. The work was begun on 15 May 2010, and given a Europa Nostra Prize on 1 June 2012. In July 2010 he was awarded the Order of Merit by the President of the Portuguese Republic. This year he has finished the restoration of the largest organ built in Portugal, the historic organ of the Monastery of Lorvão.