Virgílio Oliveira (Guimarães, 1990) currently serves as Principal Bassoon of the Staatsorchester Stuttgart – the orchestra of the Stuttgart Opera and Ballet, in Germany.
With a career focused on orchestral playing, Virgílio Oliveira held the position of Principal Bassoon at the Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen in 2024, and, between 2015 and 2024, the position of bassoon and contrabassoon at the Orchester des Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz, in Munich.
Alongside this, as a guest musician, he frequently collaborates with renowned orchestras, including: the Symphonieorchester des Bayerischen Rundfunks, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra, the Münchner Philharmoniker, the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln, the hr-Sinfonieorchester Frankfurt, the SWR Symphonieorchester, the Göteborgs Symfoniker, the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin, The Hallé Orchestra Manchester, the Münchener Kammerorchester, the Gürzenich-Orchester Köln, the Philharmonisches Staatsorchester Hamburg, the Konzerthausorchester Berlin, and the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester, among others.
As a soloist, he has performed with the ESMAE Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonietta Baltica (Germany), the Orquestra Gulbenkian, the Orquestra XXI, and the Münchener Kammerorchester (Germany), on the occasion of the semifinal round of the prestigious ARD International Music Competition, in Munich. He has also been awarded prizes in several national and international competitions in Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
During the 2017/18 academic year, he served as an assistant teacher at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo. In 2022, he was a bassoon tutor at the Mahler Chamber Orchestra Academy, where he mentored students from the Orchesterzentrum | NRW universities in Germany.
Virgílio Oliveira studied at ARTAVE and at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espetáculo, where he obtained his master’s degree under Prof. Pedro Silva. In Germany, he attended the Musikhochschule Lübeck between 2008 and 2010, studying with Prof. Pierre Martens (bassoon) and Björn Groth (contrabassoon). In February 2018, he completed his postgraduate studies in Bassoon at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg, where he studied with Prof. Marco Postinghel. In addition, he developed his interest in historically informed performance practice at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater München, in the class of Prof. Katrin Lazar, and at the Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi, in the class of Prof. Alberto Grazzi.
