Karlheinz Stockhausen: Gaze Through the Stars

Mario Mariotti graduated in trumpet with top marks and honours from the Conservatorio Francesco Antonio Bonporti in Trento, studying with Ivano Ascari. He subsequently studied with Gabriele Cassone at the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, earning a Master of Advanced Studies in Contemporary Music Performance and Interpretation.

He collaborates with contemporary-music groups including Divertimento Ensemble and Sentieri Selvaggi in Milan, and FontanaMIX in Bologna. He has performed as a soloist and ensemble member at venues including Fondazione Prada and Teatro Arsenale in Milan and the Cité de la Musique in Strasbourg.

In 2011, during the Stockhausen Concerts and Courses in Kürten, Germany, he was invited to work with the Ensemble für Intuitive Musik Weimar on a concert devoted to Stockhausen’s music.

Ricciarda Belgiojoso is a pianist and architect with a doctorate in art history from the Sorbonne. Her work brings together music, art and architecture, with a particular interest in modern, contemporary and experimental repertoire.

From 2005 she has curated contemporary-music programming for Radio Classica. Her academic and artistic work has included teaching visual arts and communication at the Politecnico di Milano from 2006 and directing the music programme of Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte from 2012. Her publications include Costruire con i suoni (FrancoAngeli, 2009), Construire l’espace urbain avec les sons (L’Harmattan, 2010) and Note d’autore. A tu per tu con i compositori d’oggi (Postmedia Books, 2013).

As a soloist and in chamber ensembles, she combines piano performance with interdisciplinary explorations and research into contemporary compositional practices.

Since 1986, Walter Prati has combined composition with performance on electronic instruments. His work centres on the interaction between traditional instruments and electronics, using a variety of live-processing techniques.

In an early collaboration with the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale in Padua, he used the 4i system for real-time synthesis and sound processing to create Aquam flare in media labia tua, for trombone and live electronics, premiered by Giancarlo Schiaffini, and Approximate Combinations of Indefinite Time, for soprano saxophone, trombone and live electronics, performed by Evan Parker and Schiaffini.

During the 1990s he worked with the IRIS research centre, part of Farfisa–Bontempi and directed by Giuseppe Di Giugno, composing works for its MARS workstation. L’isola in un’oasi, for flute and electronics, was performed at Milan’s Teatro Studio by Anna Maria Morini. His collaboration with saxophonist Evan Parker led to the Electro-Acoustic Ensemble, an improvising group using electronics that toured extensively and recorded for ECM.

As an electronic performer, Prati has collaborated with composers including Ivan Fedele, Sandro Gorli, Ludovico Einaudi, Paolo Aralla and Giorgio Magnanensi. With Bruno Canino and Antonio Ballista, he prepared a version of Stockhausen’s Mantra in which the original analogue electronics were reconstructed digitally, performing it at festivals in Milan, Rome, Turin, Naples and Bolzano. He taught electronic-music courses at the Accademia Chigiana in 1995 and 1996.

From 2000 to 2010, his activity included further Electro-Acoustic Ensemble tours and works such as Lumen 3, with texts by Giuliano Corti, a multisensory work performed in complete darkness in European theatres; Gli Angeli sopra Duino, based on Rilke’s Duino Elegies in Corti’s translation and commissioned by the MiTo Festival; and the multimedia performance Sound, Architecture, Image, created for the 150th anniversary of the Politecnico di Milano and presented at its Bovisa campus.

His collaborations with Robert Wyatt include three remixed versions of The Duchess on Postcards from Italy. With Sonic Youth guitarist Thurston Moore, he recorded The Promise and performed concerts in Italy. His Da Vinci recordings include an electronic interpretation of Stockhausen’s Tierkreis with Ricciarda Belgiojoso and Community Garden with composer and artist Alvin Curran. His teaching career has included electroacoustic composition at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi in Como.

(b Burg Mödrath, nr Cologne, 22 Aug 1928; d Kürten, 5 dec 2007). German composer. The leading German composer of his generation, he has been a seminal figure of the post-1945 avant garde. A tireless innovator and influential teacher, he largely redefined notions of serial composition, and was a pioneer in electronic music. His seven-part operatic cycle Licht is possibly the most ambitious project ever undertaken by a major composer.