António Godinho
Recorder · Early Music Specialist · Composer


Biography
Portuguese recorder player specialising in Medieval and Renaissance music, with a particular interest in approaching early repertoire as living material — living, mutable, and resonant, open to nuance, variation and the shaping of meaning through interpretation. His playing combines historical sensitivity with creative freedom, exploring music as a space for identity and encounter.
He studied in Porto with Pedro Sousa Silva, completing his degree at ESMAE in 2021, and earned his master’s degree at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis in Basel under the guidance of Corina Marti. He is currently developing a solo project that draws on medieval and traditional melodies to craft a personal musical narrative — weaving memory, interpretation and improvisation into a repertoire both rooted and newly imagined.
António regularly collaborates with groups such as Arte Minima, Gli Incogniti, FOWR, Musurgia Ensemble and Ensemble Pampinea, maintaining an active agenda performing across Europe. Alongside his concert activity, he is also active in discographic work: his solo release Telemann: 12 Fantasien für Flöte (2021, with Tomás Quintais) was followed by several recordings with Arte Minima — In Splendoribus (2021), Missa O Beata Maria (2023) and Lusitano: Liber primus epigramatum (2025) - Missa Iste Confessor Domine (upcoming, 2025) with Musurgia Ensemble and he also appears on an upcoming recording with Gli Incogniti, performing in Bach’s Fourth Brandenburg Concerto.
He is the founder and artistic director of Terebinthus, an ensemble dedicated to late medieval music. The group explores the expressive potential of 14th- and 15th-century repertoire through creative, historically informed performance. Since its founding, Terebinthus has appeared at venues such as the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and KHaus Basel and continues to develop and present new programs shaped by a shared dedication to late medieval music.


Projects
Per Varia
Through Variation and Otherness

Drawing on early and traditional melodies - from a 13th-century rota to a traditional song from León - this project reshapes historical material into a personal and living repertoire. Each piece becomes a dialogue, (re)composed through breath and movement, where interpretation becomes creation. Things reveal themselves in the encounter with the foreign. Variatio delectat is not merely an aesthetic principle, but an ontological one. It is through difference - through variation - that identity becomes perceptible. In this program, I explore variation not as embellishment or surface play, but as a mode of understanding - a way to hear more clearly and deeply, to trace the evolving shape of an object, a voice, in contact with what is not. Per Varia is a personal collection of pieces with which I have communed throughout the years: a 13th-century rota, a traditional Leonese song, a late medieval Italian istampitta, fragments of musical thoughts: these are reheard, reshaped, (r/de)composed. They form a living repertoire - intimate, unstable and true to the act of making music.
Ductia on three notes
Recorded live at Muzyka w Raju
Świebodzin, Poland — 13 August 2023
Part of a concert with the ensemble FOWR
Terebinthus

An ensemble dedicated to the imaginative performance of late medieval music. Founded and directed by António Godinho, Terebinthus explores the repertoire of the 14th and 15th centuries through creative, historically grounded interpretations. Since its founding in Basel, the group has appeared at multiple venues in Basel and continues to develop new programs for performance across Europe.
Agnus Dei [Mass of Barcelona]/Inperayntz de la ciutat / Verges ses par misericordiosa, anonymous
Recorded live at Schola Cantorum Basiliensis
Basel, Switzerland — March 2024
VIDEOS
Solo

Telemann 12 Fantasien für Flöte
Arte Minima

In splendoribus - Miguel da Fonseca (fl. 1530)
FOWR

Francesco Landini | Amor c’al tuo suggetto | FOWR
Terebinthus | Ensemble Pampinea

En attendant, Johannes Galiot (fl.1380-1395) - live @ScholaCantorumBasiliensis June 2024
GALLERY





