Pedro Carneiro took up the piano at the age of five, later studying cello and trumpet. At the Conservatório Nacional in Lisbon he studied with his father and at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama (with a scholarship from the Gulbenkian Foundation) he studied percussion and conducting with David Corkhill and Alan Hazeldine, where he graduated in 1997 with the Head of Department Award. Pedro also studied with a scholarship from the Centre Acanthes with Sylvio Gualda in 1993, later in London with the marimbist Leigh Howard Stevens and conducting in Milan with Emilio Pomárico.

Pedro Carneiro is one of the very few percussion players to have made an international career as a soloist, and has established himself as one of the world’s foremost solo percussionists, performing regularly throughout Europe, the Far East and the USA.