Filipe Alves was born in 1989 in Porto, Portugal. At the age of 11 began studying the trombone in his hometown. Then he studied Bachelor of Music in Lisbon with Reinaldo Guerreiro, and later moved to Berlin to study Master with Stefan Schulz at the Universität der Künste Berlin. He attended also several masterclasses with Christhard Gössling, Jesper Busk Sorensen, Denis Wick, Andreas Klein, Enrique Crespo. He was solo trombone of the Gustav Mahler Jugendorchester and he also played with the European Union Youth Orchestra. In 2012 he was academist of the Berliner Philharmoniker.
From 2011 until 2012 Filipe Alves was trombonist of the Remix Ensemble, in Porto. Since the 2012/2013 Season he is solo trombonist of the Staatsoper Hamburg/Philharmoniker Hamburg. Besides he has played solo trombone with the WDR Sinfonieorchester in Cologne, the NDR Sinfonieorchester in Hamburg, the Staatskapelle Berlin or the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon. He has worked with conductors like Daniel Barenboim, Sir Simon Rattle, Claudio Abbado, Franz Welser-Möst, Herbert Blomstedt, Christoph Eschenbach, Jukka-Pekka Saraste or Semyon Bychkov. He has also played with the German Brass.
In 2008 he won the 1st prize of the Prémio Jovens Músicos in Lisbon, and in 2014 the Eduard Söring prize from the Stiftung zur Förderung der Hamburgischen Staatsoper. In April 2015 Filipe Alves won the audition for solo trombone of the Staatskapelle Berlin, and recently performed the Mahler 3rd Symphony with Maestro Zubin Mehta.