Afonso Baldaque

Trombone

Afonso Baldaque, a native of Porto (2007), began his studies at the age of six at the Porto Conservatory of Music in Professor Joaquim Oliveira’s tenor trombone class. Starting at age fourteen, he supplemented his training—also at the Conservatory—with jazz studies on the instrument under Professors Gil Silva and Ricardo Resende.

He won several national and international competitions in Portugal and took top honors in all age categories of the Porto Conservatory of Music’s Internal Competition in the brass category. In 2024, he won the Casa da Música and Orquestra do Norte Awards as a soloist, as well as the Lurdes Júdice Award for best instrumentalist and best musical arrangement at the Casa da Música Future Jazz Competition. On March 8, 2025, he performed as a soloist with the Orquestra do Norte, where he premiered his piece “Concerto for Trombone and Orchestra.”

He has taken masterclasses with trombonists such as Gabriel Antão, Felipe Alves, João Martinho, Louise Pollock, Xavier Sousa, John Kenny, and David Taylor, and has participated in various orchestra workshops led by conductors José Eduardo Gomes, Pablo Urbina, Jan Wierzba, and Luís Carvalho. For several years, he was a member of the Sociedade Musical 1º de Agosto and performed as a guest with the Porto Jazz Orchestra, the FEUP jazz group, the Bando das Gaitas, BeJazz, and, more recently, the Liechtenstein Big Band.

He is currently in the 8th grade at the Porto Music Conservatory, studying in Professor Joaquim Oliveira’s tenor trombone class, and is a member of the CMP Symphony Orchestra and Wind Orchestra, the Maia Symphony Orchestra, and the Leverense Band.