Pedro Machado Abrunhosa (born 20 December 1960) is a Portuguese singer, songwriter, musician and composer. Trained in jazz music, Abrunhosa started his career in the 1980s playing in jazz bands and teaching in music and art schools in Porto. He is a co-founder of the Jazz School of Porto. In 1994 Abrunhosa launched a solo career in pop music with his debut album Viagens. This album made Abrunhosa the fastest-selling artist in Portuguese record-industry history at the time, reached number-one in the Portuguese album charts and sold over 140,000 copies. His second album Tempo (1996) continued the success and confirmed Abrunhosa's status as a major artist in the Portuguese music industry. Six of his eight studio albums have reached number-one in the Portuguese album charts. Aside from his music, he is known for always wearing sunglasses in public. Abrunhosa also played himself in the 1999 Manoel de Oliveira film The Letter. He is a board member of the Portuguese Authors Society. Early life Abrunhosa was born in Porto, Portugal. After studying at the Ruvina Music School, in 1972 he began his musical studies at the Music School of Porto, under the guidance of Professors Álvaro Salazar and Jorge Peixinho, in the subjects of Analysis, Composition, and History of Music, having already initiated his studies in the double bass. (He has often been approached by the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation to attend and participate in the Meetings of Contemporary Music in that same institution.) Once admitted into the "Conservatório de Música do Porto", he studied musical composition under the direction of Professor Cândido Lima. At that time, he was invited to take part in the Madrid Contemporary Music Group, under the direction of Spanish composer Enrique X. Macias. This afforded him the opportunity to take part in a series of shows performed in Portugal and Spain. In 1981, he received a diploma for the Courses of Musical Pedagogy from Belgian Professor Jos Wuytack. Career 1984–1994: Early career In 1984, he went to Madrid to study with double-bass player Todd Coolman and with musicians Joe Hunt, Wallace Rooney, Gerry Niewood and Steve Brown. In that same year, he finished the General Course of Composition in the "Conservatório de Música do Porto" and started studying double-bass with Alejandro Erlich Oliva. In 1985, returning to Spain, he took part in the International Jazz Seminar, and worked again with Todd Coolman, Billy Hart, Bill Dobbins, David