“The music of Vito Palumbo is imaginative and colorful; it is a pleasure to be a part of his fantasy!”
Patricia Kopatchinskaja
Profile
Sound as Living Form
Vito Palumbo’s music is built from cells that proliferate, attract one another and transform. Colour, gesture and spatial perception are active forces in the construction of form.
Education and distinctions
After his conservatoire training, Palumbo pursued advanced studies with Azio Corghi at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. The special scholarship awarded by Luciano Berio and the 2005 Goffredo Petrassi Prize were decisive acknowledgements of his compositional voice.
A prizewinner in numerous national and international composition competitions, he has developed a catalogue spanning large orchestra, solo concertos, ensemble and chamber music, music theatre, voice and electronics.
Commissions, premieres and institutions
His works have been commissioned or performed internationally by the London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble intercontemporain, CEPROMUSIC Ensemble, Camerata Bern, the Athenaeum Quartet of the Berliner Philharmoniker, Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester, Gävle Symfoniorkester, Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de Puebla, Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della RAI, Oradea State Philharmonic, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini and Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese.
Institutions and festivals presenting his music include the Académie de France à Rome, Auditorium Parco della Musica, Nuova Consonanza, Festival Pontino di Musica, Beijing’s Parade Contemporary Music Festival, Accademia Musicale Chigiana, Fundación Botín in Santander, Enescu Foundation, Future 99 in Crest, Festival Radio France Occitanie Montpellier, Barockmuseum Salzburg, Minnesota Marimba Festival and Conference, Fondazione Teatro Petruzzelli, Teatro Grande di Brescia, and the Italian Cultural Institutes in Oslo and Belgrade.
Performers, conductors and ensembles
He has collaborated with performers including Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Dan Laurin, Francesco D’Orazio, Anna Paradiso Laurin, Bahar Dördüncü, Luca Quintavalle, Mario Marzi, Niki Lada, Susanne Kessel, Duccio Ceccanti, Mats Olofsson, Ivan Donchev, Nicola Mazzanti, Nicola Fiorino, Giampaolo Nuti, Michele Marelli, Ivan Mancinelli, Christina Schorn, Michele Lomuto, Francesco Pepicelli, Tony Capula, Luis Aracama, Giulia Peri, Mario Caroli and Sante Tursi.
Conductors include Lee Reynolds, Jaime Martín, Stefano Trasimeni, Magnus Fryklund, Marco Angius and Marcello Fera. Ensembles include Ensemble intercontemporain, Camerata Bern, El Cimarrón Ensemble, Norrbotten NEO, Duo Alterno, AuditivVokal Dresden, Ensemble Conductus, Algoritmo Ensemble, New Made Ensemble, ContempoArt Ensemble, Freon Ensemble, NYKY Trio, Laborintus Trio, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Ianus Piano Duo, Dèdalo Ensemble, Stenhammar Quartet, Fiarì Ensemble, Camerata Musicale Mistà and Collegium Musicum.
Music theatre, radio and television
His work in music theatre was consolidated through a ten-year professional collaboration with actress and singer Sonia Bergamasco. In this field, the voice is explored as a threshold between speech, song, phoneme, gesture and dramatic action.
His music has been broadcast by RAI Radio3, Rai Tre, Rai Music, ARTE France, Sky Classica, Radio France and Radio Wien.
Discography and monographic projects
His discography includes releases on BIS Records, Rai Trade, Stradivarius, Digressione Music, Brilliant Classics, Ars Spoletium and Kessel Music Projects. For BIS Records, Palumbo has been the featured composer in monographic projects devoted to his concertante and orchestral music.
The Recorder Concerto was commissioned by Gävle Symfoniorkester and Dan Laurin for the Three Concertos recording project. On 17 September 2016, the Violin Concerto was recorded in Studio One at Abbey Road Studios by Francesco D’Orazio, the London Symphony Orchestra and Lee Reynolds. Released by BIS Records, Woven Lights received more than twenty five-star reviews in the international specialist press and was nominated for the International Classical Music Awards.
Publishers and editions
His scores have been published by Ries & Erler Musikverlag, Berlin; Suvini Zerboni, Milan; and Edizioni Musicali Rai Com, Rome. The catalogue also includes works currently available directly from the composer.
Poetics and musical research
Following the postmodern explorations of his early period, Palumbo turned to music theatre and the possibilities of the voice, investigating modes of production, phonemes and the relationship between sound and gesture in works including Butterfly, Cinque di Cuori, Il Catalogo, Sinforosa, La machine de sons, Comuni-Canti and Les Animaux.
His recent output focuses on large-scale form and on new possibilities of orchestral colour and texture. Violin Concerto, Clarinet Concerto, Piano Concerto, Recorder Concerto, Double Concerto for Guitar and Marimba, Drops, Fragile and Dark Clouds conceive form as an organic network of interconnected and interdependent moments and gestures.
Timbre understood as colour leads to the idea of sound-light , developed through the convergence of electronics and instruments in Chaconne and through extended techniques integrated into orchestral writing. An interest in astronomy directs this research towards an abstract sonic core articulated in large, single-movement spans: a continuous cosmic energy of which the listener perceives one circumscribed point.
Artists on Vito Palumbo
One of my finest students. His research springs from profound musical thought rooted in a culture to which he belongs. His technique serves the need to communicate.
Azio Corghi
Imagination, intelligence, refinement and solidity of writing make Vito Palumbo one of the most interesting voices among the latest generations of Italian composers.
Francesco Filidei
I have performed all of Vito Palumbo’s works for violin—the Concerto, Skin and Chaconne. In these pieces, not a single note fails to embody profound and elevated musical thought, wisdom, visionary instrumental knowledge, intensity and expressive variety. I consider Vito Palumbo one of the foremost composers of our time.
Francesco D’Orazio
Vito is a demanding composer, and his music challenges performers to test themselves. His works are intense, colourful, expressive and passionate.
Bahar Dördüncü
I met Vito Palumbo in a modest café in Bari. He suddenly said to me, “I shall write a concerto for you and large orchestra!” Thus began one of the most adventurous and rewarding artistic journeys of my life. The result was a magnificent twenty-eight-minute work: a solitary voice that gradually becomes part of a larger whole.
Dan Laurin
Vito Palumbo’s musical art opens up a world. His music radiates a restorative energy and a rare sensitivity. He is a true artist.
Philippe Schoeller
From the outset, I was impressed by his colourful and inventive music. It is subtle and sophisticated. He possesses an instinctive understanding of the orchestra, combined with consummate craftsmanship.
Francisco Coll
The variety and quality of Vito Palumbo’s extensive output, together with his technical mastery, are utterly striking. His approach is rigorously personal, making him a thoroughly fascinating and distinctive voice in music today.
Johannes Maria Staud
Within the shifting constellation of contemporary music, Vito Palumbo occupies a special place. I would venture to say that his Violin Concerto and Chaconne are not far from deserving the name of masterpieces.
Fred Popovici
Vito Palumbo’s music is extraordinary in the perfect unity between the visual appearance of his scores and the way they sound. However dense the writing may appear on the page, what reaches the ear is always clear and limpid.
Gérard Pape
I greatly admire the work of my dear friend, the composer Vito Palumbo, whose music is both imaginative and deeply expressive—a rare combination of heart and mind.
Geoffrey Gordon
Vito Palumbo’s music is the work of a true master. He achieves extraordinary depth in the refinement of his textures, within ever-evolving sonic structures that seem to have no end.
Robin de Raaff
Vito Palumbo’s music is among the most fully considered creations I have ever encountered and heard. Every detail of the score is shaped with absolute control, patience and the artisanal wisdom of former times.
Andrea Portera
Vito Palumbo’s music appeals to me greatly: it is subtle and sophisticated. He creates sumptuous sound worlds that are beautiful to hear, to behold and to study on the page.
Helen Grime
Vito Palumbo’s work is, at heart, deeply lyrical. The textural landscapes and forms of his music are endlessly inventive, surprising and imposing. It is protean music—fierce and expressive.
Kenneth Hesketh