Andreia Pinto-Correia was born in 23 August 1971 in Lisbon.[1] She is the daughter of literature professors,[2] with her father João David Pinto Correia being one of her creative collaborators.[3] Raised in her birthplace,[4] she was influenced by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose stories her mother did Portuguese-language translations of, as well as the medieval literature her father would read before bedtime.[2]
In 2011, Pinto-Correia's piece "Elegia a Al-Mu'tamid" was performed at SONiC: Sounds of a New Century; Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times said it was "like an aural fabric of piercing sustained harmonies, restless melodic bits and gurgling instrumental bursts" and a "dark, intense melody for viola".[6] She performed at the 2012 Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute; Rob Hubbard of the St. Paul Pioneer Press said that her "evocative soundscapes [...] certainly have a future there".[7]Joshua Kosman criticized her symphonic poem "Alfama" at its 2013 premiere at the Berkeley Symphony, saying that its layered nature "is so gray and unattractive - densely dissonant without pointing in any clear harmonic direction - that the effect is muted".[8]