If cut into “cross-sections”, like a mineral, Silvia Colasanti’s music
would reveal a complex, stratified magma of contrasting figures.
In the deepest stratum, a constant tension towards the saturation
of the acoustic space, achieved both through maximal density and
maximal rarefaction of the sonorous objects. Then, in the stratum
immediately above, the structural alternation of crescendo/diminuendo
and accelerando/rallentando, a “physical” representation of
corporeal breath and its anxieties. Rising a step further, there is frequent
recourse to rhythmic ostinato, the translation of a disturbed
pathology of memory. And finally, on the mineral’s surface, the fragments
of a piercing lyricism that emerge from the thick magma of
sound. All the figures, in short, to create a troubled, unappeased
“sound of foreboding”.

Guido Barbieri

 

Silvia Colasanti (Rome, 1975) obtained a diploma in music at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome and later went on to do advanced studies under Fabio Vacchi, Wolfgang Rihm, Pascal Dusapin and Azio Corghi at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena and the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. She was awarded the prestigious Goffredo Petrassi Prize by the President of the Republic.

She has won a large number of prizes in national and international music competitions, including the Zeitklang, the international composition competition of Musikfabrik NÖ (Vienna), and the Lopes Graça (Lisbon). In 2006 she won selection for the Tactus Young Composers’ Forum (Brussels, Belgium). Radio Rai selected Silvia Colasanti as Italy’s representative at the International Rostrum of Composers. In August 2007 she was artist in residence at the Civitella Ranieri Foundation in New York. She was selected together with the Quartetto di Cremona for the Fondazione Spinola – Banna per l’Arte’s Progetto Musica 2007. In 2010 she was awarded the Nino Carloni Prize in the “young composer” category “for having shown in her already outstanding musical output that she is able to pursue a highly personal and distinctive course of artistic development, where, in the form of a finely articulated compositional approach, her keen awareness of the most recent contemporary musical achievement is blended with a desire to resolutely pay heed to the call of emotion.”

Her compositions have been performed by many prestigious orchestras in a range of famous concert halls and theatres and in the context of a number of festivals both in Italy and abroad. These include the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia (Rome), the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées (Paris), the Orchestre National de Belgique (Brussels), the Konzerthaus (Berlin), the Festival Pablo Casals (Prades), the Biennale Musica (Venice), Settembre Musica (Turin), Kuhmon Kamarimusiikki (Kuhmo, Finland), Milano Musica (Milan), the Orchestra Verdi (Milan), the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino (Florence), the White Crow Music Festival (Leiden), the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama (Glasgow), the Orchestra Nazionale Rai (Turin), the Orquestra Metropolitana de Lisboa (Lisbon), the Accademia Musicale Chigiana (Siena) and the Orchestra della Toscana (Florence).

The artists who have interpreted her works include the Reinbert de Leew,Daniel Kawka, Vladimir Mendelssohn, Massimo Quarta, the Quartetto di Cremona, Gyorgy Gyorgivanyi Rath , Lior Shambadal, Arturo Tamayo and Jacques Zoon. Her composition In the earth and air was chosen by Luciana Savignano for one of her dance theatre works.

Cidim, together with the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, commissioned her to write the children’s opera Il sole, di chi è? on a text by Roberto Piumini. This was premiered in Italy in March 2009 at the Teatro Ponchielli in Cremona under the direction of Francesco Frongia and taken up in the course of the 2009-2010 season by a number of prestigious Italian institutions.

Her music theatre works Flebile queritur lyra (interpreted by Maddalena Crippa) and L’angelo del Liponard. Un delirio amoroso (interpreted by Sandro Lombardi), which were presented in Rome and Florence, have subsequently been revived in Germany.

Her upcoming commitments include the opera Faust. Tragedia soggettiva in musica on a text by Pessoa for the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Siena, a concerto for cello and orchestra for David Geringas, a return to the Konzerthaus in Berlin with a new work for a string orchestra,  a lyric opera on commission from the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino for 2012 and the release of a monographic CD under the Dynamic label.

Silvia Colasanti teaches composition at the Bologna Conservatory. Many of her works her works are published by Universal Music Publishing Ricordi S.r.l.