Paulo Mendonça

Recording a CD was an old dream; In 2004 I started organizing things to make it real.

I was 18 and entering the Orquesta Sinfônica Brasileira, I received directly from the hands of musician and composer José Guerra Vicente a manuscript of his Concerto para Trompete e Orquestra ( trumpet and piano version), and kept it very carefully. By the time I thought about recording a CD, even before having the setlist ready, I had this Concerto in mind, for being so rich and possible to have the trumpet´s range explored. I felt very honored for being the first person to have this piece significantly registered.

In 2005 I invited two great friends: Maria Teresa Madeira(piano) and Eduardo Monteiro(flute) for sound engineering.

For the recording session I rented the Sala Cecília Meireles ( in four sessions), mainly for being one of the best concert halls and for having one of the best acoustics in Brazil.

Having the recording ready, I presented the project to the Academia Brasileira de Música - O Trompete na Música Brasileira - being approved and with the release date for 2007, at the Academia Brasileira de Música.

The CD holds ten tracks, being three of them written and dedicated especially to the CD: Sonata de Sérgio (Sabbato); Fantasia ( Roberto Macedo); and Sonatina (Alexandre Shubert). There is no doubt these pieces have aggrandized the CD´s repertoire.

Completing the playlist I do an homage to great well-known composers Francisco Mignone and Lorenzo Fernandez, and contemporary Ernani Aguiar, Aylton Escobar, Ronaldo Miranda and Celso Mojola.

The recording has received several positive reviews, also from the International Trumpet Guild (ITG) magazine:

“ Paulo Mendonça, currently first trumpet of the Theatro Municipal do Rio de Janeiro and professor at Conservatório Brasileiro de Música, has an outstanding fluency at the trumpet and deals easily with extremely complicated pieces...”

“ Some of the pieces seem destinated to become standards of the trumpet´s repertoire”.