António Pinho Vargas was born in 1951, in Vila Nova de Gaia near Oporto. He graduated in History, Piano by the Oporto Conservatory, and composition at the Rotterdam Conservatory, three years until 1990. He was decorated by the President of the Portuguese Republic with the commend Order of the Infante D.Henrique, in 1995. He teaches Composition at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa since 1991. During his formation years he attended composition courses, workshops and seminars in Portugal with Emanuel Nunes; in the Netherlands with John Cage and Louis Andriessen; in Hungary with Gyorgy Ligeti and in Italy with Franco Donatoni.

He begun to play jazz in 1974 with musicians such as Kenny Wheeler, Steve Potts, Paolo Fresu, Arild Andersen, Jon Christensen and Adam Rudolph. With his jazz group he performed trough Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Belgium, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom, Slovenia, The United States of America, Cape Verde, South Africa and Macao.

Since his years in Holand, António composes mainly contemporary music, having reached a proeminent place in the Portuguese music scenario. He had his works performed in France, Germany, Holand, Belgium, Poland, Hungary, Sweden, Spain, Brasil, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Denmanrk, Russia, China, Indonesia, South Korea and USA. He recorded 10 CDs as jazz pianist/composer including the double CDs Solo (2008) Solo II (2009) and Improvisações (2011) live recorded. He has 4 monographic discs with some of his works. Among them he wrote 4 operas, 2 oratórias, 10 works for orquestra, 8 for ensemble, 19 chamber music and 7 solo pieces.

He has published three books: Sobre Música – On Music, (2002), Cinco Conferências, (ed. Culturgest) (2008) and Música e Poder published by Almedina in 2012.