Biography

Filippo PEROCCO

©Giancarlo Rado

“...Within the confusion of languages going on through today’s art (even through music), within the variety or even the lack of the rules that a composer has to choose or reinvent to impose himself, Filippo Perocco chose to put himself outside and just look at what happens. So, he weaves himself into the cracks of forms made stable both by traditions and avant-gardes, he investigates the space between the emission of sound and its manifestation, he observes the instant right before that sound is perceived, not yet as a tile of a construction, but already as an available material to invent new shapes. He places himself inside the disembodied area that prepares the knowledge and therefore he jumps right on the stage to tell us, through music, not the continuity or the essence of things, but their perpetual fragility and elusiveness...”

from motivation of Franco Enriquez Prize

BIOGRAPHY

Composer, conductor and organist.
He attended the 40th and 41st Ferienkurse von neue Musik Darmstadt.
He has been composer in residence at the European Centre for the Arts in Dresden, AARome and visiting composer at Boston University, Tufts University, New York University, Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris, Conservatory of Lugano.
In 2009 he received the Fulbright Grant.
In 2016 he has been composer in residence at the Italian Institute of Culture in Paris.

His opera, Aquagranda, commissioned from Teatro La Fenice was premiered for the opening of the lyrique season 2016/2017 and received the Special Prize of the “XXXVI Premio della Critica Musicale - Franco Abbiati – 2017”.
Also in 2017 he was awarded in the thirteenth edition of the "Franco Enriquez Price” for an art and communication of social and civil commitment.

His works has been commissioned and supported by Biennale Musica di Venezia, ENPARTS, Eclat, Siemens Foundation, Traiettorie, Milano Musica, Rai Nuova Musica, Fondation Salabert, Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Villa Romana, OPV, MdI ensemble, L’imaginarie, Ludus Gravis, Ravenna Festival, Teatro Lirico Sperimentale di Spoleto, Associazione Scarlatti, Mata Festival, Teatro Lirico di Spoleto, Tilt Brass, Sentieri Selvaggi, Taschenopern Salzsburg, Klang21, Incontri Asolani, Teatro Olimpico di Vicenza, Finestre sul ‘900, Ravenna Festival, Divertimento ensemble, ExNovo, Brighton Festival, Kaida, VokalensembleNeueMusik, Astra concerts, Altri Canti, Brinkhall Summer Concert, ECHO.

His works are performed by da Holland Symphonia, Dresdner Sinfonikern, Young Janáček Philharmonic Orchestra, Sinfonia Varsovia Orchestra, Orchestre National de Lorraine, Orchestra d'Archi Italiana, ORT, Orchestra Mitteleuropa, , Scharoun Ensemble Berlin, ModernArtEnsemble, Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, Dresden Sinfonietta, Virtuosi Italiani, Vocal Modern, CoroinCanto, Ixion, Aleph, Argento, Knights, Accroche Note, Algoritmo, Kaida.

His compositions have been performed in different festivals as Gaudeamus, Manca, Aspekte Salzsburg, Time of Music, Acanthes, Warsaw Autumn, ExNovoMusica, Musica Strasbourg, Contemporanea Udine, Theatre Dunois Paris, Musica/Realtà, Timisoara International Music Festival, American Film Festival, Center For New Music – San Francisco, Unerhörte Musik – Berlin, Cantiere di Montepulciano, BEAMS, Zèppelin, Axes, De IJsbreker, Tufts New Music Festival, Rencontres Lunel, C. N. de la Música México, New London Wind Festival, Boston Harp Festival, Review of Belgrade.

As conductor, besides the activity with L’arsenale, he collaborates with different ensemble and orchestras (Neue Vocalsolisten, Ensemble U, Ensemble Prometeo, MdI ensemble, OPV, Orchestra Teatro Comunale di Bologna, ExNovo Ensemble, EuropaChorAkademie, OENM, United Instruments of Lucilin, Mannheimer Schlagwerk, Argento, ACME, Ecce, Metropolis) festivals (Venice Biennale, Traiettorie, AngelicA, Mata Festival, Estonian Music Days, Festival Hörfest Neue Musik, Taschenopern Festival, American Film Festival, Unerhörte Musik, Rassegna Nuova Musica, Tufts New Music Festival, Amici della Musica, CZ95, Compositori a Confronto , Baregmusic, Festival Suggestioni, New Music Brandeis) and University (Harvard University, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Brandeis University, Northeastern University, Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre. He is cofounder and artistic director of L’arsenale ensemble (Premio Abbiati – 2016).

He is published by SZ Sugar, ArsPublica and Doblinger.

Work(s)

" SE LE NUVOLE  "

For orchestra

Publication : Suvini Zerboni

2024 SELECTION

...general notes...

What to do if a word or an image won't leave the brain any rest?
It happened to me with the clouds, back in 2020, when this image guided my cycle of miniatures (still in progress) for piano and resonator entitled Nuvolette.
The material from the first Nuvoletta keeps coming back, transformed, in this work for orchestra.
A pending process, almost harnessed to itself, in four hypothetical rooms in which the body of sound seems to precipitate, evaporate, saturate and, again, become ephemeral, weightless like the original piano miniature.

The whole piece, in which my usual “woodworms” recur (the debris, the dirge, the precariousness), is based on the almost vocal feature that persists in the relationships between the instruments.
A residue that wants to resist.

Each line is in constant precarious balance with another, weaving a continuous flow of resonances and alliterations.
A sort of choral mass made of shadows, backgrounds, shades that refer to the flashbacks of an imaginary song declaimed by the clouds.

...to the interpreters...

The relationships between the dynamics are often in a fagile balance, in the territories of the ppp, thin and precarious, in which no instrument must dominate the other, with the intention of synthesizing a compact sound body, always iridescent and suspended. Main attention should be paid to the messa di voce and the microtonal relationships between the different quasi-unisonic pairs. These variations in intonation, sometimes froozen, other times fluctuating, do not have a "spectral" value but rather an "affective- timbral" value.

Every transformation must never be forced and must contain the primitive song nature.

The parameters are outlined, established, carefully chosen (pitch, dynamic, rhythm, relationships of different kinds, cues, transformation and decay, backgrounds, slight differences in intonations and so on).
They are not enough.

It is necessary for each interpreter to investigate what is inside the note, within it, trying to overcome any form of muscularity, evidence, typicality.
These pages do not ask for instrumental athleticism (what is usually considered as virtuosity) but for the desire to seek a teeming tension even in what may apparently appear ordinary and known. Everything lives in the musician's inner cantus.