Andrea Liberovici
Composer and Theater Director (Venice, Italy)
Music in metamorphosis: evolution / involution / or transformation?
2022-2023: Spring
Andrea Liberovici studied composition, violin and viola at the Venice and Turin conservatories, acting at Teatro Stabile in Genoa, and singing with Cathy Berberian. In 1996, thanks to his crucial encounter with the great Italian poet Edoardo Sanguineti (librettist of Luciano Berio), he established the Teatro del Suono. Through his research into sound, he thus developed an original viewpoint that is unique on the theatrical and music scene. Because of his exceptionality and research, critics have described Liberovici as a “global composer”, a definition that is unquestionably challenging, but that fully summarizes his work. He starts from the assumption that everything that is in “motion” (cinema, words, gestures, and so on) is based on the principles of music: rhythm, timbre, melody, harmony. In fact, Liberovici is the author of the sounds, music, images and texts for his projects, and also directs them, thus giving his multimedia works the theatrical/stylistic uniformity that similar projects involving several people tend to lack.
Over the last decade Liberovici has created more than 35 projects which explore the relationship between music, poetry, theatre and technology in collaboration with such renowned artists as Yurij Bashmet, Claudia Cardinale, Peter Greenaway, Edoardo Sanguineti, Judith Malina, Vittorio Gassman, Ivry Gitlis, Regina Carter. His music has been performed by Yurij Basmeth and Moscow Soloist, Nouvel Ensemble Moderne (Montreal), Toscanini Orchestra, Teatro Carlo Felice Orchestra, Ars Nova Ensemble (Paris), Jeffrey Ziegler (New York) and Quartetto Prometeo, Helga Davis (New York) and others.
He wrote a piece for piano and violin dedicated to Martha Argerich and Ivry Gitlis, which was played during the Martha Argerich Festival in Lugano in 2015.
His works have also been presented and produced by the landmark cultural institutions such as the Teatro di Roma, the Apollo Theater and the Italian Academy in New York, La Fenice in Venice and Salle Olivier Messiaen and Philharmonie in Paris.
He has also worked in residence at INA-GRM and France Culture in Paris, STEIM Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music in Amsterdam, GMEM National Centre of Musical Creation in Marseille.
His latest work, Trilogy in Two (2019) is the peak of his exploration of different languages, which come to be woven together. “I believe that the composer of the future will increasingly look like an audio-visual composer, in that very order: Prima la musica!”
The Canadian musicologist Jean - Jacques Nattiez defined his work: “Andrea Liberovici is a composer of his time. (...) His works narrate the tragedy of post-modern humanity.
(J.J Nattiez, “Portrait of the composer by Frankenstein”, 2006)
(photo by Paolo Porto)