Luís Tinoco studied composition at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa, at the Royal Academy of Music, and at the University of York. He combines his activity as a composer with teaching, lecturing at Escola Superior de Música de Lisboa.
Tinoco's catalogue includes vocal and stage works, such as Search Songs (2007) and From the Depth of Distance (2008), both for soprano and orchestra, the music theater project Evil Machines (2008), the chamber opera Paint Me (2010), the cantata Passeios do Sonhador Solitário (2011), or the dance piece Lídia (2014), and orchestral works, such as Cercle Intérieur (2012), the Horn Concerto (2013), FrisLand (2014), Incipit (2015), O Sotaque Azul das Águas (2015), the Cello Concerto, Entre Silêncios — Clarinet Concerto, Kokyuu — Saxophone Concerto, and the Accordion Concerto.
As a music programmer and music broadcaster, he highlights his collaboration with Antena 2 / RTP (the public broadcasting organization in Portugal) as an author and producer of radio programs and as the artistic director of the Young Musicians Prize and Festival. From 2016 to 2018, he was composer-in-residence at Teatro Nacional de São Carlos, and in 2017, he was associate artist at Casa da Música (Oporto). He is Associate of the Royal Academy of Music since 2016.
He was awarded the Pessoa Prize in 2024 and the DSCH — Shostakovich Ensemble Prize for Composers in 2019.
