Biography

Luísa Tender was born in Porto, Portugal. She studied piano with Anne Mennet, Helena Costa and Pedro Burmester. In 1997 she became a pupil of Vitalij Margulis in Los Angeles, where she studied until she was admitted at the Royal College of Music in London in 2000. There she studied with Irina Zaritskaya and obtained her Master of Music degree in 2002. Later on, she earned the Diplôme Supérieur d’Exécution at the École Normale de Musique in Paris, where she was a student of Marian Rybicki. She holds a doctorate degree in Music Education and Psychology (NOVA University, Lisbon).

Her first published CD (Bach and Forward, author’s edition, London, 2009) was Classical Music Magazine’s Choice of the Month. Her second recording, Página Esquecida, a double CD with Portuguese music for cello and piano (with cellist Bruno Borralhinho, Dreyer & Gaido, Berlin, 2009), was praised by internacional critics (Fanfare, Strings Magazine, Das Orchester, amongst others).

In 2019, she published the complete recording of J. D. Bomtempo’s piano sonatas (Naxos/Grand Piano), a double CD that attracted the attention of international music magazines such as Ritmo, Music Web International, Stretto and Musikalifeiten. The Spanish music magazine Ritmo published a cover article about this double CD, intitled «Tiempo para Bomtempo – Luísa Tender».
Luísa is also the co-author (with Manuel Pedro Ferreira) of a didactic multimedia book, O pescador de sons (Lisboa, CESEM, 2019). Following one of her concerts, the London Independent described her as «a natural Beethovenian».

Luisa is the principal piano professor at ESART in Castelo Branco, Portugal. She has been director of the Master of Music Education Programme at ESART. She taught Piano at ESMAE, in Porto, from 2001 to 2003. She is also the president of the general-assembly of EPTA Portugal (European Piano Teachers Association).

During her studying years, she was the recipient of a scholarship from the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and of a study support grant from the Royal College of Music. She is a researcher in the field of Human Development and Education at CESEM (NOVA University, Lisbon).