Nicola Cisternino

Nicola Cisternino

Composer

Nicola Cisternino (born in San Giovanni Rotando, Foggia, Italy, 1957), graduated from the Conservatory of Parma and obtained a degree from the Institute DAMS (Disciplines of Art, Music and Spectacle), University of Bologna. He has also studied analysis and composition with Sylvano Bussotti at the Flessole and Genazzano schools of music.

Since 1980, his compositional interests have centered on new musical notations, elaborating his own graphic-sonic universe (sonic graffiti), which have been shown and performed with the rest of his works in many cities, such as Matera, Rome, Venice, Bologna, Montepulciano, Turin, Rouen, Paris, Heilbronn, Bucarest, Orléans and various others.

In 1993, his composition, Awithlaknnal, began a nocturnal concert of the SIMC (Internationnal Contemporary Music Society) at the archeological site of Teotihuacan, near Mexico City. In 1997 and 1999, he was invited to be a resident composer at the Ateliers UPIC. His research studies and musical articles are published in Alphabeta, Les Cahiers du Cirem, Cidim, Musicattuale, and Konsequenz.

He published with Pierre-Albert Castenet the collection: “Giacinto Scelsi: Voyage to the Center of Sound”. In the summer of 1997, he was asked by the famous popular musician Franco Battiato to produce two days of concerts of Scelsi’s works, which were then performed by the Arditti Quartet and the contrabassist Stefano Scoddanibbio at the festival of Fano.

Two monographic compact discs feature his works. The first, by the New Contemporary Ensemble of Rouen, was released in the collection “Music of the XXth Century” by the University of Haute Normandie of Rouen in 1994. The second was included as part of a monographic catalogue of his “Sonic-Graffiti” (Luna Edition) in 1997. Artistic and sonic director of the Brake Drum Percussion Ensemble, he conceived and realized the SONOPOLIS project, “Integrated Journeys into the Music of Today”, which has been performed in the region of Veneto, produced by the great theater, La Fenice, in collaboration with the city and the University of Venice.