The percussionist, composer, and improviser has a wide range of international projects as a solo performer and in collaboration with a diverse range of international artists in the fields of contemporary music, improvised music, free jazz, and world music.

Photo: Anna Motterle

Borges has been playing percussion since she was a teenager, receiving her early training on drums, percussion, jazz, chamber- and orchestral music at the Escola de Música dos Conservatório Nacional (Portugal) and the Hot Club of Portugal. Subsequently, she broadened her studies to include composition, computer music, and multimedia at the Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa (Portugal) and the Hochschule für Musik und Theater Hamburg (Germany).

For her compositions and performances, Borges brings together traditional and custom-made instruments and electronics configurations. She performs using a distinguished sound palette that constantly evolves but includes a selection of percussion instruments complemented by a wide variety of everyday objects, tools, hardware, music boxes, and toys, with which she engulfs the audience in the most diverse and unexpected sonic landscapes. She has been a member of Red List Ensemble since its founding in 2019, and the free jazz improvisation quintet SORBD, and also works with a range of musicians and improvisers including Axel Dörner, Steve Heather, Craig Taborn, Mat Maneri, Robyn Schulkowsky, Ignaz Schick, Achim Kaufmann, Christian Kühn, and many more. In 2020/21 she collaborated with the dance company Damaged Goods / Meg Stuart.

In addition to her compositional and performance activities, Sofia Borges is also an enthusiastic educator, committed to engaging the youngest generations in contemporary music and æsthetics, extended techniques, improvisation, and sound art. In her composition workshops, she initiates children and youths in new music and sound exploration with a focus on the relation between composition, sound, graphic notation, physicality, and visuals, using traditional means as well as animated scores. Further, she collaborates with such renowned institutions as the Klangradar network, an experimental sound research and sound design programme across Germany, to produce artistic-oriented pedagogical content. For its 100th anniversary, the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau commissioned a stage work from Borges that was intended for young performers and audiences alike.

  • Live at BERLIN SOL O IMPRO Festival by Sofia Borges

  • Live at BERLIN SOL O IMPRO Festival by Sofia Borges