Biennale College Musica: new calls for applications for 2022

The new calls for the Biennale College Musica – addressed to young composers and performers from Italy and abroad between the ages of 18 and 30 years old – will be online starting today, Friday 26 November 2021, through Monday 31 January 2022, the deadline to apply.

Biennale College Musica 2022 is dedicated to experimental musical theatre, the theme chosen by the Director Lucia Ronchetti for the 66th International Festival of Contemporary Music of La Biennale di Venezia (Out of Stage, 14 > 25 September 2022): “New musical theatre – states Lucia Ronchetti – has for decades invaded new types of spaces, leaving the historic stages to create different dramaturgical contexts, using new video technologies, virtual reality techniques and the spatialization of amplified sound, based on different dramaturgical forms specific to each project. The innate theatrical quality of the concert ritual is amplified, developing what Mauricio Kagel defined as instrumental theatre, a non-vocal sonic theatre, in which the instrumental gesture becomes performance and generates new characters and new stage presences”.

The calls are aimed at the selection of:

• 1 composer to compose a work of music theatre for solo voice or solo instrument and percussion trio (electronics optional) lasting from 30 to 45 minutes
  Call for applications
• 1 composer to create a site-specific sound installation for a site in Venice proposed by the Biennale Musica
  Call for applications
• 1 composer to compose a work for radio inspired by John Cage’s Sounds of Venice, a piece that the American composer presented on Rai television in Milan in 1959 on the show Lascia o raddoppia
  Call for applications
• 2 experimental performers (djs / turntablists / controllerists / beatmakers and live electronics performers) interested in the theatrical aspects of performance for the creation of two new works
  Call for applications
• 4 performers (sopranos, clarinettists, harpists, percussionists) interested in the chamber repertory of Georges Aperghis’ musical theatre
  Call for applications

The young talents selected for Biennale College Musica 2022 will develop and produce their projects between March and September 2022 participating in specific theoretical and practical sessions under the guidance of a team of tutors that include: Simon Steen-Andersen, composer (Berlin); Ondřej Adámek, composer and conductor (Prague); Gianluca Ruggeri from Ars Ludi, percussionist and conductor (Rome); Daniele Carcassi, experimental performer and composer (Florence); X. Lee, experimental performer and composer (Los Angeles); Antonello Pocetti, director and dramaturge (Bologna); and Thierry Coduys, sound engineer and computer music expert (Nice), who will work at the Centre for Computer Music and Multimedia of La Biennale di Venezia (Centro di Informatica Musicale e Multimediale – CIMM).

At the end of the training and production programme, all the works created during the process – the musical theatre work, the sound installation, the work for radio, the two experimental performances, the concert featuring musical theatre pieces from the repertory by Aperghis – will make their debut on the stages of the 66th International Festival of Contemporary Music of La Biennale di Venezia (14 > 25 September 2022).

Biennale College is an experience that engages every Department of La Biennale di Venezia – Art, Cinema, Dance, Music, Theatre ­– to promote young talents offering them the opportunity to work in close contact with the masters to develop their creations.

Biennale College Musica, organized by La Biennale di Venezia, enjoys the support of the Ministry of Culture – General Directorate for the Performing Arts and the Regione del Veneto.