• IRVINE ARDITTI (guest of honor)
• CHRISTOPHER THEOFANIDIS (chair)
• MARIO GARUTI Faculty (special guest)
• DMITRI TYMOCZKO Faculty (special guest)
• AMY BETH KIRSTEN Faculty
• UGO NASTRUCCI Faculty
• MARINA GIOVANNINI Faculty
• GIOVANNI ALBINI Faculty and artistic director
• INGRID PUSTIJANAC Musicologist in residence

Born in London, 1953, Irvine Arditti began his studies at the Royal Academy of Music at the age of 16. He joined the London Symphony Orchestra in 1976 and after two years, at the age of 25, became its Co-Concert Master. He left the orchestra in 1980 in order to devote more time to the Arditti Quartet which he had formed while still a student and that was awarded the prestigious Ernst von Siemens Music Prize in 1999 for ‘lifetime achievement’ in music. During the past decade Irvine Arditti has given the world premières of a plethora of large scale works especially written for him. These include Xenakis' Dox Orkh and Hosokawa's Landscape III , both for violin and orchestra, as well as Ferneyhough's Terrain, Francesconi's Riti Neurali and Body Electric, Dillon's Vernal Showers and Harvey's Scena, Pauset's Vita Nova, Reynolds Aspiration and Sciarrino's Le Stagioni Artificiali, all for violin and ensemble. He has appeared with many distinguished orchestras and ensembles including the Bayerische Rundfunk, BBC Symphony, Berlin Radio Symphony, Royal Concertgebouw, Junge Deutsche Philharmonie, Munich Philharmonic, Orchestre National de Paris, Het Residentie den Hague, Rotterdam Philharmonic, Asko Ensemble, Ensemble Contrechamps, London Sinfonietta, Nieuw Ensemble, Nouvel Ensemble Modern, Oslo Sinfonietta, Schoenberg Ensemble. His performances of many concertos have won acclaim by their composers, in particular Ligeti and Dutilleux. As well as having recorded over 180 CDs with the Arditti Quartet, Irvine Arditti has built an impressive catalogue of solo recordings (more than 30). His CD of solo violin works by composers such as Carter, Estrada, Ferneyhough and Donatoni, as well as his recording of Nono's La Lontananza, both on the label Montaigne Auvidis, have been awarded numerous prizes. His recording of Cage's Freeman Etudes for solo violin, as part of his complete Cage violin music series for American label Mode, has made musical history. The series is now complete. The violin concertos by Berio, Xenakis and Mira, recorded in Moscow with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra, are featured on a disc by Swedish label Bis. Irvine Arditti's arrangement for Quartet of Cage's 44 Harmonies from Apartment House can be found on Mode Records. The complete Mode recordings of Berio's Sequenzas, on which Irvine has recorded the violin sequenza, has won the Deutsche Schallplattenpreis for 2007 and was awarded best contemporary music release by the Italian music magazine Amadeus in 2008. In 2009 Arditti was appointed foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.

«...lyrical, exotic soul-searching. The acoustic echo created solely by means of instruments is fascinating» - The New York Times. Christopher Theofanidis (born in Dallas, Texas, 1967) has had performances by many leading orchestras from around the world, including the London Symphony, the New York Philharmonic, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Moscow Soloists, the National, Atlanta, Baltimore, St. Louis, Detroit Symphonies, and many others. He also served as Composer of the Year for the Pittsburgh Symphony during their 2006-2007 Season, for which he wrote a violin concerto for Sarah Chang. Mr. Theofanidis holds degrees from Yale, the Eastman School of Music, and the University of Houston, and has been the recipient of the International Masterprize (hosted at the Barbican Centre in London), the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, six ASCAP Gould Prizes, a Fulbright Fellowship to France, a Tanglewood Fellowhship, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Charles Ives Fellowship. In 2007 he was nominated for a Grammy for best composition for his chorus and orchestra work, The Here and Now, based on the poetry of Rumi. His orchestral concert work, Rainbow Body, has been one of the most performed new orchestral works of the last ten years, having been performed by over 100 orchestras internationally. Mr. Theofanidis' has recently written a ballet for the American Ballet Theatre, a work for the Orpheus Chamber Orchestra as part of their ‘New Brandenburg’ series, an opera, 'Hearth of a Soldier' for the San Francisco Opera and he currently has an opera commission for the Houston Grand Opera companies. He has a long standing relationship with the Atlanta Symphony, and has just had his first symphony premiered and recorded with that orchestra. He has served as a delegate to the US-Japan Foundation's Leadership Program and is a former faculty member of the Peabody Conservatory and the Juilliard School. He currently teaches at Yale University.

Mario Garuti (born in Modena, Italy, 1957) graduated Cum Laude at the Conservatory of Milan with Umberto Rotondi and then attended post-graduate courses at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena with Franco Donatoni. Many of his compositions, published by BMG Ricordi, have been awarded in international competitions such as Gaudeamus (Amsterdam), RAI (Milan), Fiocchi (Milan), Berg (Vienna), Hambach, Carme (Milan), Petrassi (Parma). In 1982 he took part in the Venezia Opera Prima Festival. From 1984 to 1994 he was regularly invited to teach summer courses in Darmstadt, where he won the Stipendienpreis. He has also taught several masterclasses at the Conservatory of Paris, St. Petersburg, Damascus, Marina di Massa, the University of Cremona, Musikhochschule Stuttgart, the University of Milan, the Conservatory of Vilnius, the Conservatory of Granada, and the University of Malta. He writes for the Stuttgart magazine Musik & Ästhetik. His works are commissioned and performed by prestigious interpreters around the globe, such as Trio Accanto, Alter Ego Ensemble, Arditti String Quartet, Icarus Ensemble, EX-novo Ensemble, Het Trio, Divertimento Ensemble, Baden Baden Sudwest Rundfunk Orchestra, RAI Orchestra in Milan, Orchestra La Fenice of Venice, Ensemble Novecento in Paris, Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra in Milan, Marco Rogliano, J. Faber, Paolo Tini, Stefano Scodanibbio, Steven Schick, Robert Szreder, Oscar Pizzo, Duo Stefano Vismara e Nicole Kern, Manuel Zurria, among others. His new String Quartet ‘Cielo Perso/Anima tersa’ has been played by Arditti String Quartet at the last Venice Biennale. He currently teaches composition at the Conservatory of Milan where he is the Head of the Composition Department.

Dmitri Tymoczko (born in Northampton, Massachusetts, 1969) is a composer and music theorist who is an Associate Professor at Princeton University. He studied music and philosophy at Harvard University, where his primary teachers were Milton Babbitt, Leon Kirchner, Bernard Rands, Stanley Cavell, and Hilary Putnam. In 1992 he received a Rhodes Scholarship to do graduate work in philosophy at Oxford University. He received a Ph. D. in music composition from the University of California, Berkeley, where his teachers included Jorge Liderman, Olly Wilson, David Milnes, Steve Coleman, Richard Taruskin, and Edmund Campion. Dmitri’s music has won numerous prizes and awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship, a Charles Ives Scholarship from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, two Hugh F. MacColl Prizes from Harvard University, and the Eisner and DeLorenzo prizes from the University of California, Berkeley. He has received fellowships from Tanglewood, the Ernest Bloch festival, the Mannes Institute for Advanced Studies in Music Theory, and has been the composer in residence at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, and was awarded the Arthur Scribner Bicentennial Preceptorship from Princeton University. His music has been performed and by the Ansermet Quartet, the Brentano Quartet, the Pacifica Quartet, Ursula Oppens, the Network for New Music, the Synergy Vocal Ensemble, the Gregg Smith Singers, the Janus Trio, the Cleveland Contemporary Youth Orchestra, the San Francisco Contemporary Players, and others. In addition to composing concert music, Dmitri enjoys playing rock and jazz. Dmitri’s writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Boston Review, Civilization, Integral, Lingua Franca, Music Theory Online, Music Theory Spectrum, and Transition. His 2006 article “The Geometry of Musical Chords” was the first music theory article published by Science in its 127-year history, and was discussed in Time, Nature, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, NPR, Physics Today, and elsewhere. (A second article, written with Clifton Callender and Ian Quinn, appeared in Science in April 2008.) As a result of this work, he has been invited to speak to audiences of physicists, musicians, philosophers, mathematicians, and geneticists. His book A Geometry of Music is available from Oxford University Press, and his CD Beat Therapy is available from Bridge Records.

Amy Beth Kirsten (born 8/21/1972 in Belleville, Illinois) is honored to have received a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship and Levy Supplemental Stipend for music composition. In December of 2011, the Fromm Music Foundation at Harvard University awarded her a commission to compose a song cycle for the duo TwoSense, featuring Lisa Moore, piano and Ashley Bathgate, cello. She was recently a finalist for the Rome Prize, received a Rockefeller Foundation Artist Fellowship, and was named a 2011 Artist Fellow from the Connecticut Commission on Culture & Tourism. During the 2011-12 season, Ms. Kirsten will have a U.S. premier by Sequitur at Merkin Hall in New York City and three world premiers: a theatrical work for solo flute commissioned by Tim Munro (of eighth blackbird); a theatrical work for solo piano for Vicki Ray; and a new work for orchestra featuring voices en masse (vocalizations by the players) performed by the Bowling Green Philharmonia. The 2013-14 season features the premier of a 45-minute music theatre piece for eighth blackbird generously sponsored by the MAP Fund, and choreographed and directed by Martha Clarke (MacArthur Award, 1990). Other patrons of Ms. Kirsten's works include ASCAP, the Presser Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Piano Spheres, the California Institute of the Arts, and the American Music Center.

Raised in the suburbs of Kansas City and Chicago, Ms. Kirsten received degrees from Benedictine University (B.A. Jazz Studies), the Chicago College of Performing Arts at Roosevelt University (M.M. Composition), and from Peabody Conservatory (D.M.A. Composition). She teaches composition at the HighSCORE festival in Pavia, Italy and has taught on the faculties of Peabody Conservatory, Towson University, Wesleyan University, and the University of Connecticut. Currently a freelance composer, she lives and works in New Haven, Connecticut.

Ugo Nastrucci (born in Milan, Italy in 1953) is a composer, lutenist, theorbist, and recording artist. He studied composition with Irlando Danieli and Giacomo Manzoni at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan. He studied lute with Massimo Lonardi, Paolo Chierici, and Hopkinson Smith, and conducting with Simone Fontanelli.

He was a founding member of many ensembles of Early Music, notably Ens. Pian E Forte, and collaborated with such ensembles as Il Conserto Vago, Lo Scrigno d’Orfeo, Europa Galante, Ensemble Arte-Musica, Capella Leopoldina, Alessandro Stradella Consort, Ensemble Zefiro, I Barocchisti, and Accademia del Ricercare.

He is the author of much incidental music for theatrical productions, orchestral, chamber and choral works, and serves as a professor of Composition at the Vittadini Music Institute of Pavia.

Marina Giovannini (born in Trento, Italy, 1959) holds degrees in Piano from the Conservatory of Trento, in Choral Music and Choral Conducting from the Conservatory of Verona, and in Composition from the Conservatory of Trento. She has also attended special courses in Composition where she studied with Salvatore Sciarrino and Luigi Nono. She graduated with a PhD in Modern Letters from the University of Trento. As an active composer, her scores have been performed in Italy and abroad, broadcast by the national radio RAI, and has worked as a soundtrack composer. Her activities include collaborations with the RAI, regional seat of Trento, and the “Caring About Music” radio broadcast as planner/director. The broadcasts included programs such as “Ballando ballando” (Dancing Dancing), “Musica qui classica” (Classical Music Here), and “Musica allo specchio” (Music in the Mirror). Also active as a musicologist, Gionannini carried out extensive scholarly research on and arranged the critical edition of the Quartetto Giovanile (Juvenile Quartet) of Bruno Maderna. She currently holds the position of the chair of Score Reading at the Conservatoty of Bolzano.

Italian composer and producer Giovanni Albini (born in Pavia, Italy in 1982) has written several tracks for video art, exhibitions, multimedia, commercials and television: his tracks have been commissioned and used by international brands like Armani, Alfa Romeo and BMW and his scores have won several composition prizes and have been performed by international soloists, ensembles, and orchestras all around the world (Europe, USA, Canada and Japan). His theoretical researches focus on Mathematical Music Theory and its application to Composition. On the topic, he has given several lectures at prestigous universities and conservatories like Yale University (MCM2009), Lithuanian Union of Composers, Università degli Studi di Milano, Università IULM and Università di Pavia. He writes about classical and contemporary music in the “Intelligence and Lifestyle” section of the Italian magazine "Il Sole 24 Ore", the leading italian financial newspaper. He was full professor of Composition and Counterpoint at the Conservatory "C. Monteverdi" of Bolzano, and he is professor of Harmony, Music Theory and Mathematical Music Theory in Pavia at the “F. Vittadini” Higher Institute of Music Studies. He is the Artistic Director of the highSCORE New Music Center. He studied Composition at Conservatory of Lugano and at “Giuseppe Verdi” Conservatory in Milan obtaining a full marks Degree and a cum laude Second Degree (Master). He then got a Composition 'Diploma di Alto Perfezionamento' at the prestigious Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, received a BS and a MS in Mathematics, and a Diploma in Classical Guitar.

Ingrid Pustijanac (born in Pula, Croatia in 1974) is a musicologist whose main research fields are in composition technique and music theory, in particular that of the late XXth century composers such as György Ligeti, Gèrard Grisey, Helmuth Lachenmann, Giacinto Scelsi, Luciano Berio, Salvatore Sciarrino and others, based on sketch studies and analysis of compositional process. She received a degree in composition and choral conducting from the Conservatory of Mantua, and pursued her studies in electronic music and orchestral conducting at Scuole Civiche of Milan. She was an assistant on the Musicology Faculty at the University of Pavia  (Harmony and Music Analysis), a young professor at the Music Academy of the University of Zagreb (XXth century music and Croatian XXth century music), and has been a conductor of the Choir for the Musicology Faculty in Cremona from 2001.

Among her several publications:

• Natura e calcolo nella concezione del tempo di Gérard Grisey, in Suono e natura. Composizione e teoria musicale in Francia: 1950-2000, (a cura di) Gianmario Borio e Pierre Michel, Istituti editoriali e poligrafici internazionali, Pisa 2005, pp. 173-186.
• Il concetto di tempo nel pensiero compositivo della seconda metà del XX secolo, in Storia dei concetti musicali: armonia, espressione, forma, opera e tempo, a cura di Gianmario Borio e Carlo Gentili, Carocci, Roma 2007, pp. 343-359.
• La musica d’arte dell’Occidente oltre l’Occidente, in Atti del Seminario Internazionale di Studi L’Etnomusicologia e le musiche contemporanee, Fondazione Giorgio Cini 2009.
• La ricezione del pensiero spettrale negli ultimi due decenni in Italia, in Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi «Italia/Francia. Musica e cultura nella seconda metà del XX secolo», a cura di a cura di Amalia Colisani, Gabriele Garilli, Gaetano Mercandante, Epos, Palermo 2009, pp. 347-372.