Mauro Lanza studied piano at the Conservatoire Benedetto Marcello in Venice, took writing and musicology courses at the Ca’Foscari University of Venice and has trained with Brian Ferneyhough, Salvatore Sciarrino and Gérard Grisey. He won first prize at the Fondazione Valentino Bucchi (Rome, 1996) and the Carlo Gesualdo da Venosa (Potenza, 1998) international composition competitions. In 1998, he studied the composition and computer-music curriculum at IRCAM, where he then began to lecture. He worked as a guest professor at McGill University in Montréal in 2004-2005 and taught master classes at the Paris Conservatoire, the Conservatorio di Musica in Cagliari and the conservatory in Cuneo. He is regularly involved in research at IRCAM involving physical modelling synthesis and computer-assisted composition and has been a composition professor there since 2010. In 2002 and 2004, he was honoured at IRCAM and the Archipel festival in Geneva with three monographic concerts.
In 2004, IRCAM and the Paris Opera commissioned Lanza to compose the music for Angelin Preljocaj’s ballet, Le songe de Médée. During his 2008 residency for creating new work at Le Fresnoy, his collaboration with video artist Paulo Pachini produced Descrizione del Diluvio. Lanza was a fellow at the Civitella Raniere Foundation in 2006, the French Academy in Rome in 2007-2008 and the Akademie Schloss Solitude from 2009 to 2011. His work for a double string quartet, Der Kampf zwischen Karneval und Fasten was premiered by the JACK and Arditti quartets at the 2012 Wittener Tage fur neue Kammermusik.
Joyful, often mocking, equally demanding and distant, Mauro Lanza’s compositions mix traditional, electroacoustic and even a variety of toy musical instruments. He also makes use of some rather unexpected devices, like the rain machine featured in his Nubi non scoppiano per il peso (2011).
Traduction Julie Walker [ii-15]