Francisco Frade Mendonça

Francisco Mendonça (born July 21, 1998) grew up in a rural village in the outskirts of Lisbon. From an early age, through his parents’ influence, he developed an interest in drawing and natural sciences, while also showing a great enthusiasm for music. During his teenage years, he became fascinated with architecture and gained a new appreciation for nature.

At 16, he began to play the electric bass and guitar by himself, embarking on a phase of intense artistic and musical exploration.

In 2017, he enrolled in Computer Science at Faculdade de Ciências da Universidade de Lisboa, where he aquired knowledge in automation, optimization, and resource management, along with new perspectives on project organization, structuring, and planning. During this time, he also developed a passion for electronic music and signal processing. He completed his bachelor’s in 2020 and, two years later, started a degree in Sound Engineering at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.

At ESML, he was introduced to new working methods, acquiring essential skills for collaborative projects as well as for the recording and post-production of various repertoires. During this period, he began to interlink his interests, joining computer science with composition, resulting in a compositional system that enables the creation of generative music based on asynchronous events. It was also at ESML that he first encountered the field of analog audio, marking the beginning of a new phase of artistic and technological exploration.

His multidisciplinary interests are reflected in his composition style, which is based on constant experimentation, using sound as raw material ready for processing.