Sequiera Costa is a legend among pianists. In 1951 he was honoured with the Grand Prix de Paris at the Marguerite Long International Competition. Since receiving that momentous honour, he has played an important role in music history in our time. Dmitri Shostakovich invited him to join a distinguished body of jurors, which included Sviatoslav Richter, Dimitri Kabalevsky, Aram Khachaturian and Emil Gilels, for the First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow. As the youngest member of this prestigious jury, he was only a few years older than Van Cliburn, the winner of the competition.

Sequeria Costa belongs to an almost forgotten generation of artists representing the great romantic traditions of the 19th Century. His first teacher, José Vianna da Motta, was a pupil of the legendary composer/pianist Franz Liszt. His subsequent teachers count among the greatest pianists of the age, including Edwin Fischer, Jacques Fevrier and Marguerite Long, and they contributed to making him one of the great pianists of our time.