Biographical Info

The Irish pianist Honor O´Hea studied in her native country under Mabel Swainson and Jan Cap. She pursued her degree studies in musicology at the University of London, where she graduated with distinction. During this period she won many awards including the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe Scholarship for piano and, in two successive years, the piano prize of the Ulster Bank Music Foundation Awards. She earned her Master’s degree in piano performance in the United States, where she was awarded a Fulbright scholarship to study under the international renowned Portuguese/American pianist Sequeira Costa at the University of Kansas. In 1996 Ms. O’Hea had the distinction of being the first non-American to receive the Adell Hancock Scholarship from the U.S. Institute of International Education.

She continued her studies privately with Dominique Merlet in Paris and has also worked with Pascal Rogé and Paul Badura Skoda. She has given many solo, chamber and concerto performances, as well as masterclasses, in the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Portugal, Great Britain, Austria, Croatia and Ireland. At present she is a tenured professor of piano at the Madeira Conservatory – Professional School of Arts, where she has taught since 1996.

The Robert Andres/Honor O’Hea piano duo has been active since 1995. They have played concerts both in four-hand and two-piano combinations and have met with enthusiastic response from critics and audiences alike. Various composers, such as Roger Price, Pedro Macedo Camacho and João Victor Costa, have dedicated their works to the duo. They performed for many festivals and concert series in various European countries, including Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Poland, Cyprus, Slovakia, Ukraine, Portugal, Cyprus, Ireland, Slovenia, Belgium, Austria, and Croatia, as well as in the United States. They gave recitals at the annual conferences of EPTA (European Piano Teachers’ Association) in Dubrovnik (Croatia) and Funchal (Portugal). In 2004 they performed at the University of Tulsa, Oklahoma, for the “Tribute to Sequeira Costa” Festival, with the return visit as guest artists in April of 2015. In 2008 they released a CD of solo and four-hand piano works by the Madeiran composer Victor Costa. In 2015, they celebrated 20 years of activity as a duo with a performance of Bruch’s Two Piano Concerto with the Madeira Classical Orchestra. During the past few years they performed for the Armonie della Sera Festival, PianoEchos Festival, Barletta Piano Festival (Italy), Eifel Musicale International Festival (Germany), Algarve Music Series (Portugal), Les Concerts de Saint-Merry (Paris, France), Interfest Bitola (Macedonia), Antonio Vivaldi Festival in Cosenza (Italy) and 13^th Washington International Piano Festival in Washington D.C., where they were also on the faculty and in the jury of the 8^th Catholic University of America Piano Competition.