Composer, hornist and drummer Paulo Rios Filho nowadays is developing his musical studies in composition at the Music School of Federal University of Bahia. Since 2003 he has been in the classes of Paulo Costa Lima, Antônio Burgos, Agnaldo Ribeiro and Wellington Gomes (composition); Flávio de Queiroz (counterpoint, form and harmony); and Angela Lühning (ethnomusicology), among others.

He has frequented summer classes and workshops with the composers Bruce Trinkley (USA), Derek Bermel (USA), Leon Biriotti (URU); the french horn player Sören Hermansson (SE); and Mestre Edivaldo, in Brazilian Afro percussion (candomblé) lessons. He is a researcher sponsored by CNPq, Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development, being oriented by Paulo Costa Lima in his work “The Promotion of Cultural Dialogues in the Grupo de Compositores da Bahia’s production of contemporary music”.

Since 2006, he has given lessons of Elementary Musical Theory at the Federal University of Bahia.

As a composer, his works includes pieces for solo, chamber groups and orchestra, as well as vocal combinations, music for theater plays and ‘rock bands’ and arrangements for orchestra of Brazilian Afro Popular songs. Your piece “O Contrariador” was selected for the XVII Bienal Brasileira de Música Contemporânea, in october of 2007. He has got two prizes in the I Composition Competition “Ernst Widmer”: “graduation — chamber music prize” and “graduation — symphonic music prize”.

He is a founder-member of the composer’s group of contemporary music called OCA, which promotes the elevation of human being state through the creation, recording and diffusion of actual music and the promotion of educational programs strongly based on composing music. In 2008, he was selected as composition student at the famous Festival Internacional de Inverno de Campos do Jordão.