Luciano Chessa
Guest Faculty | Sound Studies and Sonic Arts (M.A.)
Contact through office@sounds.berlin
TEL +49 30 3185 - 2482
Lietzenburger Straße 45, 10789 Berlin
Luciano Chessa is a composer, conductor, audiovisual/ performance artist, and music historian. His compositions include the opera Cena oltranzista nel castelletto al lago—a work merging experimental theater with reality TV which required from the cast over 55 hours of fasting—and A Heavenly Act, an opera commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, with original video by Kalup Linzy. Chessa has been commissioned multiple times by the Performa Biennial, and in 2014 he presented three events at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum as part of the exhibition Italian Futurism, 1909-1944: Reconstructing the Universe. Chessa’s work appeared more than once in Artforum, Flash Art, Art in America, and Frieze; and has been featured in the Italian issue of Marie Claire and in the September Issue of Vogue Italia. In 2009, his Orchestra of Futurist Noise Intoners (OFNI) was hailed by the New York Times as one of the best events of the year, and Chessa has subsequently conducted it across the USA and internationally, to sold out houses. In 2018 he prepared the edition of Julius Eastman's Symphony No. II, the world premiere of which he conducted at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall (The New York Times described Chessa’s rendition as a work that “radiates Cosmic Grandeur”.
Selected Publications
Scores:
“1462 Willard Street” for Viola, Berlin, Verlag Neue Musik (2020)
Musical Editions
Julius Eastman: Symphony No. II. Luciano Chessa, Editor. Schirmer (2019)
Books
Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts and the Occult, University of California Press (2012)
Articles
“Gay Guerrilla: a Minimalist Choralphantasie” in Gay Guerrilla, Rochester, University of Rochester Press, 2015