Luca Francesconi is the Director of the Music section of the Venice Biennale. His appointment was approved on 6th February 2008 by the Board of directors chaired by Paolo Baratta, providing him with a four-year mandate foreseeing not only the direction of the International Festival of Contemporary Music but also responsibility for permanent activities based around a research project.

 

Among the most esteemed and performed contemporary composers at an international level, Francesconi is also a conductor and was the pupil of Azio Corghi, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Luciano Berio, of whom he was an assistant in the period 1981-1984. To date, he has written more than 70 works for various orchestral groupings (from solo to full orchestra, opera to multimedia), many of which commissioned by important musical institutions and radio broadcasters.

 

He has produced five works for the RAI and various theatrical works, frequently using multimedia technology. Two such are the video-operas Striàz and Lips, Eyes… Bang for performer and ensemble with real-time audio and video transformations. His vocal and electronic music includes Etymo for soprano, chamber orchestra and electronics, performed –apart from other occasions– also at the Biennale di Venezia’s 48th International Festival of Contemporary Music in 2004. He has written several pieces for orchestra, including Wanderer for the Orchestra Filarmonica della Scala conducted by Riccardo Muti, and Cobalt, Scarlet, performed for the first time by the Oslo Philharmonic under the direction of Marek Janowsky. In 2002, he wrote Buffa Opera, conducted by the composer himself, and commissioned and produced by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano with a text by Stefano Benni and performed by Antonio Albanese. His most recent works include Kubrick’s Bone for cimbalom and ensemble written for the soloist Luigi Gaggero.

 

Among the many prizes and international awards he has received are the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis (Darmstadt 1990), the Förderpreis der Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikstiftung (Munich 1994) and the Prix Italia for the radio-opera Ballata del rovescio del mondo (1994).