Riccardo Piacentini

Riccardo Piacentini (born 3 July 1958, in Moncalieri, Province of Turin) is an Italian composer and pianist, professor of Composition at the Milan Conservatory.

He graduated in 1980 in Composition and Piano at Turin and Alessandria Conservatories, as well as in Literature and Music History at University of Turin with a thesis on the orchestral works of Goffredo Petrassi.

He studied with Carlo Pinelli, favorite pupil of Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Franco Donatoni.

Since 1986 he is artistic director of Rive-Gauche Concerti's season, now at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.

He participated also in courses and workshops with Sylvano Bussotti, György Ligeti, Ennio Morricone, André Richard (at the Heinrich Strobel Center in Freiburg, where Luigi Nono worked), Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1988 he was among the performed composers at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt.

He is particularly active both as composer of foto-musica con foto-suoni for museums - a new musical technique for counterpointing human voice, acoustic and electronic instruments and environmental sounds -, and as pianist of the Duo Alterno.

With this internationally acclaimed ensemble, founded in 1997 together with his wife soprano Tiziana Scandaletti, he has performed all over the world, keeping concerts and masterclasses on the Italian vocal contemporary repertoire (recently at the University of California, Berkeley, Stanford University, Portland State University, University of New Mexico, ArtLink Festival in Belgrade, Shenyang Conservatory, Moscow Conservatory, Nuova Consonanza Festival of Rome, etc.).

He has written many musicologic articles and didactic writings, such as Armonia tonale (Tonal Harmony, Curci, Milan, 1999) and I suoni delle cose (The sounds of things, Curci, Milano, 2011).

Works with electronic and/or “foto-musica”:

Other works: