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.

I love classical music and jazz. I started as a jazz pianist in my earlier years and my first true love in music - if not the Beatles that was in the air from my parents - will always be the jazz I truly got attracted to by my own ear. I've been playing since I was 7 but my longtime piano teacher, Ron Drotos, introduced me to jazz at 12 in the form of a mixtape of Bud Powell from 1949 and it peaked my interest in jazz in my teenage years. People like Bud Powell, Oscar Peterson, Sonny Rollins, Joe Pass..... - very much summed up my soundscape in middle and high school. A lot of my influence to my sound as a performer sources from what I learned under Ron to this day.
Regarding composition, though I first began writing music at 16 in High School, most of my compositions are from 2017 onward.
In 2023 I received a Certificate in Core Musical Studies at The Juilliard School in their Extension Division. I had the opportunity to study with such people as Dr. Daniel Felsenfeld, Dr. Dalit Warshaw, Dr. Ruka Shironishi, Dr. Patrick Kreeger and Dr. Greg Knowles, among others.
I am a Westchester-based pianist/composer and teacher who loves jazz and classical music. Thank you for enjoying my music! :3

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