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Patrício da Silva (1973) received formal musical training at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa where he studied piano with Jorge Moyano and composition with António Pinho Vargas (B.M. in piano, 1995). He then pursued his composition studies in the US, first as a recipient of the Betty Freeman Foundation Scholarship in Composition with Morton Subotnick, Stephen L. Mosko, and Mel Powell at the California Institute of the Arts (MFA, 1999), and later, with support from the Fundação Luso-Americana para o Desenvolvimento (Portugal), he completed the Ph.D. program in composition at the University of California (2003), having studied composition with William Kraft, computer music with Curtis Roads, and algorithmic composition and music with Artificial Intelligence with David Cope. Further studies in the US include work with Michael Gandolfi, John Harbison, Sydney Hodkinson, Augusta Read-Thomas and Bernard Rands, and in Germany, seminars with Helmut Lachenman and Karlheinz Stockhausen. His post-doctoral work as invited researcher at IRCAM in France was followed in the UK by a research grant for computer music by the Portuguese Foundation of Science and Technology. Awards include the International Barto Prize, the Gould Family Foundation Composers Award, the Ojai Festival Music for Tomorrow, the Otto Eckstein Family Fellowship, the Susan and Ford Schumann Fellowship, and residencies at the MacDowell Colony and the Atlantic Center for the Arts. His music has been recently heard at Tanglewood, Ojai Music Festival, Aspen, Ruhr Festival, Schleswig Holstein Music Festival, Historische Stadthalle Wuppertal, Bayer Erholungshaus, London Festival of American Music, Piano Spheres, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), Zipper Hall, Cistermúsica, International Music Festival Póvoa do Varzim, Yamaha's YASI, SCRIME, and Los Angeles Sonic Odyssey. His music has been played by notable soloists and ensembles including the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra, California Ear-Unit, Lontano, Memphis Symphony Orchestra, Moscow Piano Quartet, New Century Players, New Fromm Players, Orquestra do Algarve, Shakespeare & Co., Stefan Asbury, Tzimon Barto, Gloria Cheng, Joana Carneiro, Cesário Costa, William Eddins, Lorenz Gamma, David Gutkin, Paul Haas, David Loebel, Brian Pezzone, José Rodilla, Mark Robson, Ming Tsu, Laurent Wagner, and Lei Weng. Following the International Barto Prize, American pianist Tzimon Barto has toured with da Silva's piano music to enthusiastic audiences in Europe, including a special fund-raising concert for the Beethoven-Haus in Bonn in 2008 to acquire the manuscript of Beethoven's Diabelli Variations.