José Antônio Rezende de Almeida Prado or, simply, Almeida Prado (Santos, February 8, 1943 – São Paulo, November 21, 2010) was a brazilian classical composer and pianist, that wrote more than four hundred compositions during his life time. In Brazil, Almeida Prado studied with Dinorá de Carvalho (piano), Osvaldo Lacerda (harmony) and Camargo Guarnieri (composition). After winning the 1st prize for his cantata 'Pequenos Funerais Cantantes', based on a text by brazilian writter Hilda Hilst, at the I Guanabara Music Festival, in 1969, Almeida Prado continued his studies in Europe. He studied with Olivier Messiaen and Nadia Boulanger in Paris from 1970 to 1973, besides brief studies with György Ligeti and Lukas Foss in Darmstadt. Returning to Brazil in 1974, Almeida Prado first taught at Cubatão Musical Conservatory, and then, hired by Zeferino Vaz, he became a professor at the UNICAMP (Campinas University) Institute of Arts, retiring in 2000. After his retirement he settled in São Paulo, where he occasionally taught music courses and presented a radio program at Cultura FM. In January 2007, his cantata 'Hiléia, Um Mural da Amazônia', based on the poem of the same name by Ives Gandra Martins, was performed at Carnegie Hall by the Orquestra Bachiana Filarmônica de São Paulo, conducted by João Carlos Martins On Almeida Prado's death, his personal friend, conductor João Carlos Martins, stated that Prado had possibly been the most important living Brazilian composer. He was born in Santos, São Paulo in 1943. He died in São Paulo in 2010, having lived there for the latter part of his life. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Almeida+Prado">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.