Cristina Pato

Who is Cristina Pato?

Cristina Pato is a bagpiper, pianist and composer.

The first female Galician bagpiper to record a solo album in Spain, she has released four albums as a solo bagpiper and two as a pianist. Pato has collaborated with artists as Yo-Yo Ma, Silk Road Ensemble, Arturo O'Farrill, The Chieftains, Paquito D'Rivera, The World Orchestra, Damian Woetzel, Lil Buck, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Osvaldo Golijov and in more than twenty recordings as a guest artist.

Pato is Doctor of Musical Arts in Collaborative Piano from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University where she studied with a fellowship from Fundación Barrié de la Maza. She was awarded the Edna Mason Scholarship and the Irene Alm Memorial Prize for excellence in scholarly research and performance. She holds both a Master of Music Degree in Piano Performance and a Master of Music Degree in Music Theory and Chamber Music from the Conservatori Superior de Música del Liceu in Barcelona. She also holds a Master of Fine Arts Degree in Digital Arts from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona.

She has given more than 500 concerts in Spain, Portugal, USA, France, Italy, Germany, Mexico, China, Korea, Angola, Arab Emirates and India many of them recorded and broadcast by television stations such as BBC, TVG and TVE and acclaimed by The New York Times, El País, La Voz de Galicia or The Scotsman. She appeared as a guest artist in Yo-Yo Ma "Songs of Joy and Peace" in 2008 and on television shows such as The Colbert Report, Lincoln Center and The Kennedy Center Honors.