Born in Lisbon in 1944, Maria Joao Pires started playing the piano on her own when she was three years old. She gave her first public performance at the age of four.
Between 1953 and 1960 Pires studied at the Lisbon Conservatory with Professor Campos Coelho and Francine Benoit. At 17 she received a scholarship from Gulbenkian Foundation to study in Germany, first at the Musikhochschule in Munich with Rosl Schmid and then in Hanover with Karl Engel. Pires credits Engel with helping her to place music within the context of life.
Her recital débuts at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1986 and Carnegie Hall, New York, in 1989 were the start of an international career. In addition to her concerts, she made recordings for Erato for fifteen years and Deutsche Grammophon for twenty-five.
Since the 1970s, Pires has devoted herself to reflecting on the influence of art in life, community and education, trying to discover new ways of establishing this way of thinking in society; always searching for new ways in which individuals and cultures are encouraged to respect and share ideas.
In 1999, she created the Belgais Centre for the Study of the Arts in Portugal, where she developed choirs for children from rural backgrounds: experimental concerts and workshops for professional and amateur artists alike.
Pires complemented the Belgais approach with two further projects in Belgium in 2012: the Partitura Choirs, a project which created and developed choirs for children from rural and underprivileged backgrounds, and the Partitura Workshops where different generations share the stage in order to find alternatives to competition, and to create an altruistic dynamic between artists. Both projects aimed to create respect for each other, respect for all cultures, the environment, nature, life: encompassing the earth and all around us.