People

Composition faculty: Nick DiBerardino, David Serkin Ludwig, and Dmitri Tymoczko.
Guest faculty: Virginio Zoccatelli. Performers: Trio Kanon.
Musicologist in residence: Giovanni Cestino.
Executive producer: Paolo Fosso; Artistic director: Giovanni Albini.
Production assistants: Fabrizio Nastari and Giovanni Rudello.

Nick DiBerardino

Composer Nick DiBerardino is noted for creating “richly textured, multilayered” sound worlds (Minnesota Star Tribune) that tell fantastical tales. He has written music about everything from failed flying machines and particle physics to Walt Whitman and tall glasses of beet juice. A Rhodes Scholar, Mr. DiBerardino has received commissions from many distinguished artists and institutions, including Symphony Tacoma, the Dover Quartet, Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, Sandbox Percussion, the New College Choir, arx duo, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, Music From Angel Fire, and Star Trek’s John de Lancie. Residencies include those for the Intimacy of Creativity Festival at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and Hidden Valley Music Seminars, where Mr. DiBerardino is a founding faculty member of the Emerging Composers Intensive. His works have been performed around the world by the American Composers Orchestra, the Minnesota Orchestra, Aizuri Quartet, Contemporaneous, So Percussion, and many others. Mr. DiBerardino founded England’s first laptop orchestra, OxLOrk, and has designed several collaborative composition initiatives, including a children’s opera composed with students at Girard College and a workshop series for people living with Alzheimer’s disease, created in partnership with the Penn Memory Center. He earned his bachelor’s degree at Princeton University, an M.Phil with distinction from the University of Oxford, an M.M. from the Yale School of Music, a Post-Baccalaureate Diploma from the Curtis Institute of Music, and an M.F.A. from Princeton University, all in composition. Mr. DiBerardino is the dean of the Curtis Institute of Music. He serves on Curtis’s composition faculty as chair of composition studies. He is additionally the director Curtis’s acclaimed new music series, Ensemble 20/21.

David Serkin Ludwig

David Serkin Ludwig’s first memory was singing Beatles songs with his sister; his second was hearing his grandfather perform at Carnegie Hall; foreshadowing a diverse career collaborating with many of today’s leading musicians, filmmakers, and writers. His choral work “The New Colossus,” opened the private prayer service for President Obama’s second inauguration. The next year NPR Music named him in the world’s “Top 100 Composers Under Forty.” He holds positions and residencies with nearly two dozen orchestras and music festivals in the US and abroad. Ludwig has received commissions and notable performances from many of the most recognized artists and ensembles of our time, including the Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Minnesota, and National Symphony Orchestras, Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the Dresden Music Festival, as well as Jonathan Biss, Jeremy Denk, Jennifer Koh, Jaime Laredo, David Shifrin, eighth blackbird, the Dover and Borromeo Quartets, Imani Winds, and the PRISM Saxophone Quartet and conductors Yannick Nezet Sequin, Manfred Honeck, Juanjo Mena, and JoAnn Falletta. This year Ludwig was honored by the American Academy of Arts and Letters as recipient of their annual award in music. In 2022 Ludwig was awarded the Stoeger Prize from the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, the largest of its kind for chamber music. He received the prestigious 2018 Pew Center for the Arts and Heritage Fellowship, as well as the First Music Award, and is a two-time recipient of the Independence Foundation Fellowship, a Theodore Presser Foundation Career Grant, and awards from New Music USA, the American Composers Forum, American Music Center, Detroit Chamber Winds, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2021 Ludwig was named a Steinway Artist by Steinway and Sons. He served on the composition faculty of The Curtis Institute of Music for nearly two decades before being appointed Dean and Director of Music of The Juilliard School in June 2021. He lives in New York City with his wife, acclaimed violinist Bella Hristova, and their four beloved cats.

Dmitri Tymoczko

Dmitri Tymoczko was born in 1969 in Northampton, Massachusetts. He studied music and philosophy at Harvard University, and philosophy at Oxford University. He received his Ph.D in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley. He is currently a Professor of Music at Princeton, where he has taught composition and theory since 2002. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Elisabeth Camp, who teaches philosophy at Rutgers University, their son Lukas, who was born in 2008, and their daughter Katya, born 2012. His compositions are polystylistic and mercurial, drawing on genres from the Renaissance to rock. His music has been commissioned and performed by groups including the Amernet Quartet, the Atlantic Brass Quintet, the Brentano Quartet, the Corigliano Quartet, Flexible Music, Gallicantus, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Illinois Modern Ensemble, Janus Trio, the Kitchener/Waterloo symphony, Network for New Music, Newspeak, Pacifica Quartet, Synergy Vocal Ensemble, Third Coast Percussion Quartet, and Ursula Oppens. Among his awards are a Guggenheim fellowship, a Rhodes Scholarship, the Leonard Bernstein fellowship from Tanglewood, a fewllowship from the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and the Block lecturship from the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics. His book A Geometry of Music (Oxford) has been described as “a tour de force” (The Times Literary Supplement), a “monumental achievement” (Music Theory Online), and, potentially, a modern analogue to Schoenberg’s Harmonielehre (The Musical Times). His first three CDs, Beat Therapy (“far reaching yet utterly entertaining,” Newmusicbox), Crackpot Hymnal (“ebullient … polystylistic … kinetic … vividly orchestrated and vibrantly paced,” Sequenza21), and Rube Goldberg Variations (“foot tapping,” “sassy,” the product of “an intriguing musical voice that should interest anyone in search of a new auditory experience,” Limelight), are available from Bridge Records. A new disc, Fools and Angels has just been released. In addition to composing concert music, Dmitri enjoys playing rock and jazz and writing words. His articles have appeared in the American Mathematical Monthly, the Atlantic Monthly, Berfrois, Boston Review, Civilization, Integral, Journal of Music Theory, Lingua Franca, Music Analysis, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, Science, Seed, and Transition. His article “The Geometry of Musical Chords” was the first music-theory article published in the 130-year history of Science magazine. He has been invited to speak to audiences of musicians, philosophers, cognitive scientists, mathematicians, physicists, and the general public; articles about his work have appeared in a variety of newspapers and magazines, including Time, Nature, and Physics Today.

Virginio Zoccatelli

Virginio Zoccatelli is an Italian composer, conductor, storyteller and speaker. Thanks to his multifaceted cultural and musical background, he is known for having developed his style being a composer who aims to know the world and the deep human interiority through various artistic languages. He graduated in Piano, Instrumentation for Band and Composition, earning also a Bachelor degree in Literature and Philosophy at the University DAMS of Bologna with a thesis on G. Petrassi. He was included in the “Enciclopedia italiana dei Compositori Contemporanei” (1999) at the age of 30. His catalog currently features more than 600 works, including scores for orchestra, wind orchestra, choir, solo singers, chamber works, soloist, scores for theater and soundtracks that have won several national and international composition prizes. Among them, “La Maschera” (1992-2013), “Il violino magico” (2009), “Ecomusical” (2008, Premio Abbiati per la Scuola), “Le storie di Woodland” (2010), “Empedocle” (2015) and “Vivantigone” (2016, Premio Abbiati per la Scuola), Foibe (2020), are worth of mention. Moreover he composed “Giulietta e Romeo… l’amore continua” (2012-2013) and “Indaco” (2014-15), on stage since 2012 in several Italian theaters, a production by RBRDanceCompany. He is the founder of the Ensemble Accademia Secolo XXI (2001), which he also conducted in public concerts and for which he played the piano in many album productions. In 2016 he published the monographic CD “Mediterraneo” produced by MEP (Roma); in 2019 Almendra Music published the Cd “An Italian embroiderer”. He has also published many scores and tracks for RAI – the Italian national television and broadcasting company – that have been frequently broadcasted, among them are: the CDs “Open dialogues” (2010), “Orchestral movements” (2011), “Jeux et Paysages” (2012), “Landscapes” (2013) and “Dai Balcani al Mediterraneo” (2016). Furthermore, he has collaborated in several productions with many renowned international artists, among them are the actors G. Lazzarini, P. Pitagora, U. Pagliai, and the movie directors P. Valerio, A. Giarola, F. Viviani, and T. Turolo for film’s soundtracks “Diec”. His works have been featured in relevant festivals and musical institutions and some of the most important performers of his music include musicians such as V. Parisi, C. Ambrosini, A. Canonici, A. Mannucci, M. Somadossi, M. Testa, W. Themel, M. Attura, A. Ferrante, Ex Novo ensemble, Accademia Secolo XXI, MAV Budapest Orchestra, Ned Ensemble, Orchestra giovanile del Teatro Politeama di Palermo, Orchestra del Conservatorio di Trapani, Ensemble del laboratorio di Musica Contemporanea del Conservatorio di Udine, Ensemble Time Machine, Ensemble Musica Attuale, Solisti Veneti, G. Vianello, A. Carcano, E. Calcagni, F. Scomparin, G. Brunelli, L. Trabucco, S. Ballarin, M. Marcassa, C. Sebastianutto, L. Degani, T. Milenkovic, Wakana Kimura, and Ruslan Talas. Since June 2017 from October 2020 he was the Rector of the Conservatorio “J. Tomadini” in Udine, where he is former professor of ‘Elementi di Composizione per Didattica’. Virginio Zoccatelli at present teaches Composition, Harmony and Counterpoint at the Conservatory in Trieste. Since February 2024, he has held the position of national secretary of SIMC (Italian Society of Contemporary Music).

Giovanni Albini

Giovanni Albini (b. 1982), composer, ukulelist and music theorist, is a tenured professor of Music Theory, Solfège and Music Perception, head of research, and delegate for international projects at the Conservatory “Antonio Vivaldi” of Alessandria, where he has established the world’s first Bachelor’s degree program in Ukulele, teaches Composition at the bachelors of the Conservatory of Lugano (Swiss Confederation), and is an academic member of the Istituto di Studi Superiori dell’Insubria “Gerolamo Cardano”. He is the coordinator of the joint PhD program in “Practices and Repertoires of Italian Music,” administratively based at the Conservatory of Alessandria. He is the scientific director of the national project “Casta Diva”, funded by PNRR funds. He is the research coordinator of ANDA – Associazione Nazionale Docenti AFAM. He taught the seminar Quantitative Methods for Art at The University School for Advanced Studies IUSS Pavia, an Italian Public Institution devoted to research and higher education. He holds a BM, a MM and a PgD in Composition, a BS and a MS in Mathematics and a MM in Classical Guitar. He received his Ph.D in music composition from the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn. His theoretical research focuses on mathematically informed aesthetic theories of music composition, mathematical music theory and its application to composition and he devoted himself with special interest to soundtracks for interactive media, algorithmic music and non linear composition systems. He has given several lectures on these topics at many universities and conservatories including Curtis Institute of Music, Yale University (USA), Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (MX), Open University (UK), Lithuanian Union of Composers (LT), Politecnico di Milano (IT), etc. In March 2023, he presented his research on contemporary ukulele music during seminars for composition classes at esteemed institutions like The Juilliard School in New York and the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. He has written several concert music scores as well as many tracks and sound designs for video art, exhibitions, multimedia, commercials, trailers, videogames and television. He is the founding Artistic Director of the highSCORE New Music Center and of the highSCORE Festival, today’s principal Italian Contemporary Music Festival offering masterclasses. Moreover, he is a ukulelist devoted to the modern and classical reportoire who commissions and performs new contemporary classical music written for the ukulele and transcribe classical and renowned contemporary and twentieth century scores for it. The recordings of his music are published by Brilliant Classics, Da Vinci and Stradivarius. His ukulele transcriptions are edited by Ricordi and exclusively distributed by Hal Leonard.

Giovanni Cestino

Giovanni Cestino (1992) holds a degree in Classical guitar from Conservatory of Alessandria, a MA in Musicology from University of Pavia, and a PhD in Musicology from University of Milan. He also took courses in Composition, Choral Conducting, and Renaissance Lute. He collaborates with LEAV – Ethnomusicology and Visual Anthropology Lab (University of Milan), and with Centro Studi Luciano Berio (Florence). Between 2018 and 2019 he has been visiting fellow at the Harvard Music Department. He also took part in several projects by the Paul Sacher Stiftung (Basel), which recently awarded him a six-months research scholarship. He currently a faculty member at Milan Choral Academy, and a postdoctoral fellow at University of Milan (Department of Cultural Heritage and Environment).

Paolo Fosso

Paolo Fosso is a composer and an Event Manager, dedicated to promoting contemporary music and digital awareness by featuring a range of events throughout the year, such as the highSCORE Festival and the Screen Music Program. Nominated at the International Sound & Film Music Festival (ISFMF), “one of the largest and most important film music festivals in the world.” President of the Conservatory of Pavia from 2010 to 2013. Selected by the European Commission in Brussels as Expert both in the MEDIA and in the Culture programs. Global Head of Contents at Campus Party, the greatest technological experience of the world. He studied Computer Science at the University of Milan and Composition at the Conservatory of Milan. As a passionate Entrepreneur, he invests in marketing and technology. Recipient of the Ivano Becchi Professional Award endowed by the Banca del Monte di Lombardia Foundation and the Talent of Ideas prize by UniCredit Bank.

Fabrizio Nastari

Fabrizio Nastari (b. 1990, Roma) is an Italian composer whose aesthetic is based on the use of ironic devices. He is currently pursuing a PhD degree in Artistic Research at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre in Tallinn as a composer. Using a broad spectrum of techniques, to create contrast or to seek cohabitation for different musical textures, Fabrizio wants to reflect upon the absurdity of the time we are living in and the complexity of the human being. Irony has a primary role as inspiration and as a rhetorical and compositional tool as well. He is active as a researcher through the publishing of articles and presenting his works in international conferences as well. His music has been performed by important performer such as Mivos Quartet, Livia Rado, Tema Quartet, Paolo Ravaglia, Quartetto Indaco, Estica Woodwind quintet, Prezioso String Quartet, unassisted fold etc. in important Festival in Europe such as , “Estonian Music Days”, “RavennaFestival”, “highSCORE Festival”, “UNM Festival”, “VIPA Festival”, “Le forme del suono”, “Commute Festival” and others. Alongside Classical Guitar and Piano, he has studied Composition, Electroacoustic Composition and Choral Conducting at the Conservatorio “Ottorino Respighi”. Since 2017 he lives in Tallinn where he got his Master degree in Classical Composition studying with Toivo Tulev and Helena Tulve. He took part in several masterclasses, seminars and workshops with many composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Julia Wolfe, Stefano Gervasoni, Michael Finnissy, Rebecca Saunders, Ivan Fedele, and others. Since 2019 he works as a production assistant in the highSCORE Festival.

Trio Kanon

The Trio Kanon (the name refers to the musical form “canon,” but it also combines two Japanese words: “Ka,” meaning “flower,” and “On,” meaning “music,” literally translating to “flourishing music”) was formed in 2012 out of the friendship of three musicians who decided to share their passion for chamber music by studying under the guidance of the Trio di Parma at the International Chamber Music Academy of Duino, founded by the Trio di Trieste in 1989. Diego, Lena, and Alessandro each trained individually with musicians such as Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Salvatore Accardo, and Rocco Filippini at prestigious institutions such as the Accademia Stauffer in Cremona and the Accademia Internazionale S. Cecilia in Rome. They later attended chamber music courses together with Alexander Lonquich at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, with Oliver Wille in Paris (Centre Européen de Musique de Chambre ProQuartet), and in Vienna at the Internationale Sommer Akademie 2015 with ECMA teachers (where the trio won the “Chamber Music Award,” sponsored by the Haydn Institute and the University of Music, as the best ensemble). The Trio achieved international acclaim by winning 1st Prize and two special awards at the 2018 International Chamber Music Competition of Pinerolo and Torino, a competition that had not seen an Italian group win in 17 years. Trio Kanon has performed in venues such as the Teatro La Fenice in Venice, Sala Casella and the Cappella Paolina for the Concerti del Quirinale in Rome, Teatro Verdi in Trieste, Sala dei Notari for Amici della Musica in Perugia, Teatro Vittoria in Turin for the Unione Musicale, Sala Piatti in Bergamo for the Società del Quartetto, Palazzo Ducale and Palazzo Te in Mantua for the Mantua Chamber Music Festival, as well as internationally in England, Croatia, Austria, China, and the United States, receiving widespread public and critical acclaim. In 2015, the trio was invited as a resident group at the renowned Aldeburgh Music Festival in Snape Maltings, where they performed twice at Jubilee Hall. In 2019, they toured Japan, performing at the Music Salon Amadeus in Kobe, the Phoenix Hall in Osaka, and Beethoven’s Triple Concerto at the Aqua Cultural Center in Toyonaka. They also had the privilege of working with Alfred Brendel, delving into Schubert’s repertoire in a masterclass organized by the Mozart Italia Association of Modica. In the 2020-2021 season, the Trio was invited to Montepulciano for the inaugural symphonic concert of the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte, where they performed Beethoven’s Triple Concerto alongside the Orchestra Regionale Toscana conducted by Antonio Greco. In 2023, notable performances included their debut in the historic season of Conway Hall in London, appearances for the Società dei Concerti in Piacenza, and the Concert Season of Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona. They have recorded for the Amadeus magazine, Movimento Classical, and Warner Italy. Since November 2021, Diego, Alessandro, and Lena have been chamber music professors at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole.