Maria Inês Pires is a PhD candidate in Historical Musical Studies at NOVA University Lisbon. She completed her bachelor’s degree in saxophone and her master’s degree in music education, in the saxophone class of Professor Carlos Canhoto. She studied at PESMD Bordeaux Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in the saxophone and contemporary chamber music class of Marie-Bernadette Charrier. She won the Best Performer Award in the CRCB Competition (2014), the second prize in the Cabral National Competition (2014) and she was a finalist in the Vitor Santos International Saxophone Competition (2014). Pires participated in the 17th and 18th World Saxophone Congress in Strasbourg and Zagreb. She premiered pieces by young Portuguese composers at the Monaco Electroacoustique Festival (2017, 2019). She has attended masterclasses with Jean-Marie Londeix, Claude Delangle, Vincent David, Lars Mlekusch, Marcus Weiss and Andrés Gomis. Pires was a lecturer at NCMM in 2021 and at EIMAD in 2022.