Marco Longo / Ink Still Wet 2024
«May we introduce you …?»Get to know Marco Longo, one of the five participants from this year's Ink Still Wet workshop, which Composer in Residence Enno Poppe will lead.
«I find the proposal of being able to work both as a composer and as a director of my music very stimulating and interesting, under the guidance of a highly experienced and professional figure like Mr. Enno Poppe. (…) I would like to have this opportunity for getting in touch with the highly professional musicians that are part of this project, at the purpose to have precious advice about the orchestral techniques and also to hear how my musical ideas should really sound.»
Biography
Marco Longo (1979) is an Italian composer and pianist. His musical repertoire includes chamber music works, orchestral compositions, solo pieces and music for theatre.
His works have been performed in several concerts and festivals in Europe, USA and China, such as Festival Pontino (Latina), Nuove Musiche (Treviso), GAMO (Firenze), Rondò (Milano), Mondi Sonori (Trento), Mixtur (Barcelona), Mostra Sonora de Sueca (Valencia), New Music Miami, Mise- en Festival (New York), Sun River Prize (Chengdu - Cina), Noisy Nights (Scotland), Festival 5 Giornate (Milano), Matinée dell'Accademia (Roma), Cluster (Lucca), Accademia Filarmonica Romana (Roma), Nuova Consonanza (Roma), Festival Il Suono, ISCM 2018 World New Music Days (Beijing), NOSPR (Katowice), Echoes of Time (Miami), International Review of Composers (Belgrade), Encuentros Sonoros (Seville), Twin Cities Contemporary Music Festival (USA), Weimarer Frühjahrstage, Tokyo Bunka Kaikan, Centro Cultural de Belem (Portugal) etc.
Ensembles and soloists who have performed his works include Divertimento Ensemble, Dedalo Ensemble, SurPlus, AlterEgo, dissonArt, l’Arsenale, PMCE, Vertixe Sonora, mise-en ensemble, Nodus, Red Note ensemble, Tokyo Nomad ensemble, NewMade ensemble, Ensemble Suonogiallo, Orkiestra Muzyki Nowej, Imago Sonora, via nova ensemble, Tokyo Sinfonietta, Icarus vs. Muzak, Grupo Musica Contemporanea Lisboa, Alda Caiello, Maria Grazia Bellocchio, Francesco Gesualdi, Dario Savron, Marco Fusi.
He has won prizes and accolades at several national and international composition competitions: the National Prize of Arts, «Premio Bucchi» (Roma), «A. Manoni» competition, G.A.M.’s Composition Competition (Milano), Jeunesse Musical Competition (Bucarest), MeA Competition (Roma), AFAM Competition (Milano), «...a Camillo Togni» International Competition (Brescia), Sun River Prize (China), NewMade Week (Milano), «L. Nono» Competition (Torino), International Wroclaw Orchestra Competition (Poland), Premio Evangelisti (Roma), Irino Prize (Tokyo), Weimar Composition Competition (Germany), «J.Peixinho» Competition (Lisboa).
His music has been broadcasted by Rai RadioTre and RadioClassica.
He is the founder of MotoContrario, a music ensemble and collective of composers and artists based in Trento (Italy), which dedicates itself to the study and expansion of the contemporary repertoire.
He graduated in piano and composition from the State Conservatory in his home town of Trento. He then deepened his knowledge of composition with Azio Corghi and Mauro Bonifacio in Siena (Accademia Chigiana), in Brescia (Romanini Foundation) and in Bologna (Philharmonic Academy). He also took part in seminars and masterclasses with A. Solbiati, S. Gervasoni and N. Vassena. He was accepted into the Schloss Solitude summer academy in Stuttgart (Chaya Czernowin, Steven Takasugi and Amnon Wolman); he attended the 46th Darmstadt summer courses and the 8th Impuls-Akademie in Graz, where he attended Pierluigi Billone's courses in particular. He graduated in composition from the S. Cecilia Academy in Rome under the direction of Ivan Fedele.
Since his adolescence, he was dedicated to teaching: he completed a two-year training programme as a piano teacher at the Conservatory of Trento and taught piano, chamber music and aural training at various music schools. He earned a didactic master's degree in piano and a national teaching qualification. He has taught music reading at the Conservatory in La Spezia and in Sassari; currently he teaches composition at the Conservatory in Reggio Emilia.
Marco Longo's Selection
«As, I believe, happens to most people, there are musics that are indelible traces of the childhood and adolescence, some that remember important people met in the life or other ones that are memories of special or particular events.
However, as I believe happens to most musicians, there are encounters with musics or with other musicians that are almost «appointments with fate» throughout one's artistic career: they can be sudden gashes into other sound worlds or they can represent turning points towards other poetics or other aesthetics directions.
They can, at times, remain as impressions and «sonic imprints» that are not completely decipherable, but that stay well fixed in an indefinite place in the consciousness and soul of a musician.
I tried to include some of all these types of musics in the list, without the possibility of including them all; some are intended to be representative of a particular composer and are chosen primarily for their brevity. In other cases, I tried to «bind» the love for more than one musician in a single piece: Berio and the Beatles, Sciarrino, Ravel and American «old songs», traditional folk songs of my region and Benedetti Michelangeli (as arranger), Janis Joplin and Gershwin…
Hope you will enjoy it!»
Marco Longo about his playlist