His father, Pedro António de Quadros, had grown up in Raia, Goa and then moved to British India to study medicine.

In 1979, he won a DAAD (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) scholarship for graduate study at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg in Austria.

These included a Graduate Diploma in Music, studying conducting with Robert Rosen at the Victorian College of the Arts.

Helen Kemp Lifetime Achievement Award, American Choral Directors Association (Eastern Region), 2022.

André de Quadros began his music teaching career while he was a graduate student at La Trobe University.

In 1981, he was appointed to a coordinator position at Billanook College, an open entry non-selective school, in the outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne.

After five years, in 1986, he accepted a position at a secondary girls’ school, Presbyterian Ladies' College, Melbourne, where he remained full time until 1991.

While he was teaching in elementary and secondary schools, he was engaged in giving creative music and movement workshops for pre-service and in-service teachers.

He was involved in leading key statewide curriculum developments for high school, which led to new music courses as part of the Victorian Certificate of Education.

In the early years of the twenty-first century, he was increasingly involved in conducting concerts in Indonesia, particularly focusing on major choral/orchestral works.

His frequent visits to Indonesia resulted in a close relationship with the Manado State University Choir (MSUC) from the province of North Sulawesi, which he has directed since 2009.