JP Coimbra (João Pedro Coimbra) is an awarded multi-instrumentalist and composer multi-genre oriented. He began his musical path as a percussionist and drummer, studying jazz, African polyrhythms, and classical repertoire. In his late twenties, after extensive touring with leading Portuguese acts, he felt an urge to compose his own music. Using a sequencer and sampler, he blended diverse musical backgrounds with striking results.
These early explorations led to the creation of his first project, MESA. Their self-titled debut (MESA, 2003) reverberated through the Portuguese music scene, fusing intricate experimentalism with song form and the atmospheric touch of the Bristol sound. The album won several awards and was named one of the best European releases of 2004 by Billboard’s Emanuel Legrand, alongside Kraftwerk and Franz Ferdinand. Over six albums, MESA defied categorization, balancing pop accessibility with subversive experimentation, and cementing Coimbra’s reputation as a composer for film, television, and theatre, as well as a producer, musical director, and multi-instrumentalist.
Over time, he became increasingly fascinated by timbre-driven composition and the expressive possibilities of acoustic ensembles. Seeking to move away from screen-bound processes, Coimbra turned to music rooted in gesture and space. This impulse culminated in VIBRA (2020), an ambitious solo project recorded in resonant, untreated locations—subway stations, concrete buildings, even a subterranean river—transforming these spaces into instruments and reshaping his compositional language to interact with their unique acoustics.
Revealing, his latest project, marks a turning point in his career by uniting research, technology, and artistic practice, exploring the co-evolution of humans and technology. The music draws on influences from classical, contemporary, and indie music, focusing on processes that place the body at the center of technological musical practices. Its compositional approach treats timbre as the core musical material and the foundation for melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic structures.
Recorded and produced between Porto and London, Revealing results from a collaboration with Leo Abrahams – producer, musician, and long-time collaborator of Brian Eno, Jon Hopkins, and Anohni. The album expands the sonic universe initiated with VIBRA, his solo debut released in late 2020 and reissued internationally by Cognitive Shift, the label of Manners McDade (Faber & Faber), which represents artists such as Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith, Nils Frahm, and Matthew Herbert, who have remixed From Afar. VIBRA was performed in major Portuguese venues including Casa da Música (Porto), Theatro Circo (Braga), and Teatro Municipal da Guarda. It received critical acclaim in Portugal, England, and Germany, with features in Público, Expresso, Time Out, Visão, and Jornal de Notícias, and was officially supported by Antena 2. Internationally, it received airplay on Scala Radio (UK) and Flux FM (Germany), alongside performances in London and Leeds.
He’s also a PhD researcher developing an electromyographic gestural controller that uses the body’s electrical signals to enable real-time performance, composition, and spatial audio.