*1956, Milan
Work
Lichtschatten for Flute and Ensemble (2020)
Born in Milan in 1956, Luca Francesconi studied composition with Azio Corghi, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Luciano Berio, with whom he collaborated closely as an assistant from 1981 to 1984. He also received a jazz education at the Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 1990 he founded the center for music research and performance AGON acustica informatica musica in Milan which he directed until 2004. He spent the years 1993–94 teaching and researching at IRCAM in Paris, the music research institution founded by Pierre Boulez. Performances of his works throughout Europe since the mid-1980s have established Luca Francesconi’s international reputation. His oeuvre includes more than 100 compositions, ranging from solo pieces to multimedia works to music theater and opera, commissioned and performed by the world’s leading musical institutions. Among his most recent works are the orchestral piece Dentro non ha tempo, premiered at Milan’s La Scala in 2014, Das Ding singt for Cello and Orchestra, first performed under the baton of Matthias Pintscher at the 2017 Lucerne Festival, and Daedalus, written for Emmanuel Pahud, Daniel Barenboim, and the Boulez Ensemble and premiered at the Pierre Boulez Saal in 2018. His opera Quartett on texts by Heiner Müller, commissioned by La Scala in 2011, has been performed more than 80 times in seven new productions around the world and will be staged with the original German libretto for the first time at the Staatsoper Unter den Linden in October 2020. The music of Luca Francesconi, whose most recent opera Timon of Athens will premiere at the Bavarian State Opera this November, features prominently in several concerts during the 2020–21 season at the Pierre Boulez Saal.