Live recording from the world premiere performance
Broadcasted on Jong Klassiek at VPRO
Christian Karlsen, conductor
New European Ensemble
White Crow Music Festival Opening Concert 11 nov 2010

Winner of SMFF Award Best Contemporary Music Work in Chamber Music of the Annual Music Publisher's Award 2011 in Stockholm
Published by Gehrmans Musikförlag AB, Stockholm.

Bells and Waves - chamber symphony in five movements

Composer

Biography

Vito Palumbo has been writing music since an early age. After studying at the conservatory he graduated with honors from the prestigious Accademia Chigiana in Siena and the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome studying with Azio Corghi. He also obtained a special scholarship personally awarded by Luciano Berio as the best graduate. In 2005 he was awarded the renowned ‘Premio G. Petrassi’ (established by the President of the Italian Republic at the Quirinale, Rome) for his compositional work.
Winner of numerous national and international composition competitions, Vito has received commissions and performances worldwide from institutions and ensembles such as the London Symphony Orchestra, Ensemble Intercontemporain, Cepromusic Ensemble, Camerata Bern, Berlin Philharmonic Athenaeum Quartet, Helsingborgs Symfoniorkester, Gävle Symfoniorkester, Orquesta Sinfónica del Estado de Puebla, Orchestra Nazionale della RAI, Oradea State Philharmony, Filarmonica Arturo Toscanini, Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese, Academie de France, 'Parco della Musica', Nuova Consonanza, Festival Pontino di Musica 2021, Parade Contemporary Music Festival in Beijing, Accademia Chigiana in Siena, 'M. Botin' Foundation - City of Santander, Foundation Enescu, 'Future 99' - Crest, Montpellier International Festival, Barockmuseum Salzburg, Minnesota Marimba Festival and Conference 2010, Fondazione Lirico-Sinfonica Teatro Petruzzelli, Teatro Grande di Brescia, Italian Cultural Institute of Oslo and Belgrade and many others.
He has collaborated with great soloists such as Patricia Kopatchinskaja, Dan Laurin, Francesco D'Orazio, Anna Paradiso Laurin, Bahar Dorduncu, 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, Sante Tursi. Conductors include Lee Reynolds, Jaime Martin, Stefano Trasimeni, Magnus Fryklund, Marco Angius, Marcello Fera. Ensembles such as Ensemble InterContemporain, Camerata Bern, El Cimarrón Ensemble, Norrbotten NEO, Duo Alterno, AuditivVokal Dresden, Ensemble Conductus, Algoritmo Ensemble, New Made Ensemble, ContepoArt Ensemble, Freon Ensemble, NYKY Trio, Laborintus Trio, Ensemble Suono Giallo, Ianus Piano Duo, Dèdalo Ensemble, Stenhammar Quartet, Fiarì Ensemble, Camerata Musicale Mistà, Collegium Musicum.
His output in musical theatre has been consolidated for ten years in collaboration with the singer-actress Sonia Bergamasco.
Several important broadcasters have broadcast his works, including RAI Radiotre, Channel V Music RAI, Rai Tre, Arté France, Sky Classical, Radio France and Radio Wien.
His works have been published by Ries&Erler Musikverlag, Berlin, Suvini Zerboni, Milan, and Edizioni Musicali Rai Com, Rome.
He has released several CDs with the labels BIS Records (of which he is the main artist), Rai Trade, Stradivarius, Digressione Music, Brilliant Classics, Ars Spoletium, and Kessel Music projects.
His production in recent years has focused on large symphonic works for large orchestra. The Recorder Concerto was commissioned by Gävle Symfoniorkester and Dan Laurin, for a monographic CD for the Swedish label BIS Records.
On 17 September 2016, he recorded with the London Symphony Orchestra at Abbey Road Studios (Studio 1) his Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Musikverlag Ries & Erler, Berlin) with Francesco D'Orazio, soloist and Lee Reynolds, conductor. The monographic album was released by Bis Records and received more than 20 “5-star” reviews from the major specialized magazines in the world, and an ICMA nomination.

About the music

Starting with postmodern experiments in the first period, he after focused on some musical theater forms exploring the possibilities of the voice (melologue) researching various ways in the voice emission with the study of phonemes in many works devoted to the musical theater (Butterfly, Cinque di Cuori, Il Catalogo, Sinforosa, La machine de sons, Comuni-Canti, Les Animaux) along with some influences from his teachers (Azio Corghi and Luciano Berio) about this vocal research.
His output in recent years has focused on large symphonic works for the full orchestra. The Violin Concerto, the Clarinet Concerto, the Piano Concerto, the Recorder Concerto, the Double Concerto for Guitar and Marimba, Drops for harp and string orchestra, Fragile for electric guitar and string orchestra and Dark Clouds for orchestra, represent his full research in further possibilities of the orchestral colors and textures, but also in an organic idea of interconnected and interdependent formal moments and gestures, like a network of neural connections. In the last works, the timbre as color leads to a new idea of "sound-light", researched also with the help of electronics mixed with instrumental sounds (Chaconne, for electric violin and electronics) and thanks to a research of extended techniques also open to the orchestral writing. 
To his interest in astronomy, the goal is to research an abstract "core sound" in a unique and large movement (every work is never organized in separate movements), like eternal cosmic energy of which we are but a small circumscribed point.

Benjamin Staern (b. 1978) started his musical experience with studies in cello, piano and percussion in his youth. Studies in musicology at Lund University and subsequently studied composition at the Malmö Academy of Music during 1998-2005 with Rolf Martinsson, Hans Gefors and Luca Francesconi, and made an early breakthrough, while still a student at the Malmö Academy of Music, with the symphonic work The Threat of War (1999). 

From this point on, Staern has developed a deeply personal style with an output including orchestral and chamber works, solo pieces and electroacoustic music. An interesting aspect of his work as a composer is his unusual ability to associate tones and timbres with different colours and tints. This is a variant of a phenomenon called synaesthesia which is fundamental in his perception and the creation of his music, and which is reflected in his sound world as well as in many of his work titles (Yellow Skies, Colour Wandering etc.) 

Today Staern receives commissions on a regular basis. Looking into the near future, he is commissioned to write a major work for Malmö Symphony Orchestra and song cycle for alto Anna Larsson and Helsingborg Symphony Orchestra. From September 2010 he is composer-in-residence with New European Ensemble for them he composed works from this collaboration such as Tranströmersånger (selected poems from the Sad Gondola - collection by Nobel-prize author and poet Tomas Tranströmer) and Bells and Waves (Chamber Symphony), winner of the SMFF Award 2011 in the category ”most important work in chamber music/smaller ensemble”.

Works by Benjamin Staern is today performed not only by all the major Swedish orchestras but also internationally by orchestras such as the MDR Sinfonieorchester, Tokyo Symphony Orchestra, Deutsche Kammerphilharmonie Bremen, Iceland Symphony Orchestra, Staatsorchester Rheinische Philharmonie and the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. Staern has collaborated with ensembles including New European Ensemble, Sonanza Chamber Ensemble, Ensemble Aspekte and Stockholm Chamber Brass. Soloists include Håkan Hardenberger, Anna Larsson, Johannes Möller, Karin Dornbusch, Carina Vinke, Gitta-Maria Sjöberg, Philippe Cassard and conductors Michael Christie, Daniel Raiskin, Christian Karlsen, Mats Rondin, Mika Eichenholz and Stefan Solyom.

I’m a swedish composer of operas, symphonies, concertos and chamber music. Living in Stockholm.
For more info, please visit:
www.andersnilssoncomposer.com

Please visit my webpage,
www.johanullen.com

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Bells and Waves - chamber symphony in five movements

Benjamin Staern Composer