João Gato

Born in 2000, João Gato started taking Jazz saxophone seriously whilst studying with the altoist Ricardo Toscano, at the Hotclub of Portugal. At age 18, he finished the practical course, after taking 3 years of classes with Toscano and being selected to represent the school at the annual National Jazz combos competition.

In 2018, he started his Bachelor Degree in Jazz saxophone in at ESML, where he studied with prestigious portuguese musicians such as Gonçalo Marques, Desidério Lázaro, Pedro Moreira, Afonso Pais and Nelson Cascais. He finished his degree in 2021, with the grade of 18/20 in the final recital.

In late 2021 he founded his own project, Apophenia, a quartet that reunites some of the brightest young musicians in Lisbon with the objective of finding a common ground between free improvisation and the Jazz compositions without an harmonic instrument, with an aesthetic influenced by musicians such as Eric Dolphy, Peter Evans and Ornette Coleman. The compositional work is all done by Gato.

In early 2022, Apophenia went to Berlin to play 2 shows (one fully available on youtube at https://youtu.be/MI0mcklPB6c ) and recorded their debut album shortly after returning to Lisbon.

Apophenia's debut album came out on the 21st of July of 2022, on the portuguese label Robalo, and was released at their festival and broadcasted by Antena 2.

Besides fronting Apophenia, João is also part of young singer Filipa Franco's quintet, Sonic Voyaging (a project that combines improvised music and dance), Coletivo Teto (a research colective into improvisation techniques), Zé Almeida's quintet, BBTTT and Orquestra de Jazz de Setubal.

He has played with musicians such as Peter Evans (Jardins de Verão Gulbenkian 2020), Nelson Cascais, Nazaré da Silva, João Pereira, João Almeida and João Valinho. He is part of the recently released EP "Forget about Mars" by Débora King.

During the last 5 years, he has taken lesson with musicians such as Jacob Sacks, Perico Sambeat, Chris Pitsiokos, Gonçalo Marques and André Fernandes. He has mantained sporadic lessons with Peter Evans and has been studying with Yedo Gibson for over a year.

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