Simone Piraino
*21 October 1985
Works by Simone Piraino
Biography
Simone Piraino (Palermo - Italy, 1985)
Composer, musicologist and show manager.
He studied at the University of Palermo where he graduated with honors, in 2007 in Music Disciplines (Bachelor of Arts), in 2010 in Musicology (Master of Arts), and won 4 scholarships on merit. In 2012 he completed the 2nd Level Master Degree in Organization and Management of the Show at the Conservatory "Vincenzo Bellini" in Palermo where he graduated in Composition (Master of Music) with Giovanni D'Aquila and Marco Betta with 110/110, honors and mention. He is also the winner of 4 scholarships at the Palermo Conservatory for the organization of the Institution's concert and orchestral activities. Between 2019 and 2020 he participates at the annual Film Scoring Masterclass held by Hans Zimmer.
Since 2015 he is a Professor of various musicological disciplines at the Higher Institute of Musical Studies "Arturo Toscanini" in Ribera (History of Music, Forms of poetry for music, Musical Dramaturgy, Instruments and methods of Bibliographic research, Organization of the Show), Institution for which he takes care of the organization of the main events as Production Manager.
He currently holds the positions of Correpetiteur for Surtitles and Chief of Music Archive of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo and of Production Director of the Mediterranean Orchestra, a team carried out in collaboration with the Palermo conductor, Alberto Maniaci.
In 2012 he made his debut as a composer; has to his credit over 50 premieres in Italy and abroad. His music has been performed in various Italian cities (Palermo, Rome, Milan, Catania, Pisa, Lucca, Agrigento, Trapani ...) and other cities like London, Beirut, Moscow, New York and Toronto; he has participated in numerous International and National Seasons and Festivals (Season of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo, International Rostrum of Composers, Beirut Chants, Silver Sounds International Festival in Petrozadovsk, St. Martin-within-Ludghate in London, Columbus Day in New York, Orestiadi di Gibellina, Palermo Classica, Lucca Classica, Festival of New Music, Contemporary Music Festival, Friends of Music in Palermo, Cefalù, Caccamo and Termini Imerese, Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory in Palermo, Santa Cecilia in Rome, ISSM A . Toscanini di Ribera, Franco Zappalà Theater).
In 2020 he composes the music for The soldier and the girl, a short film by Jaykumar Shah, an Indian director residing in Arizona (USA) and, following the year, for the short film Come fall leaves by Vincenzo Totaro (Italy), winner of numerous awards at the International Film Festivals (Toronto Alternative Film Festival, Indapuram International Show Film Festival, IndieLisbon International Film Festival and London Film Festival).
His discography includes: Sound reflections: italian contemporary piano trios (Da Vinci Publishing, Osaka 2020 - Performers: Trio Arté) and Verso la Luce (Stradivarius, Milan 2020 - Performers: Quartet of first parts of the Teatro Massimo in Palermo with Alberto Maniaci, piano). His compositions have been performed by: Orchestra of the Teatro Massimo, Quartet of first parts of the Teatro Massimo, 100 Cellos, Palermo Classica Symphony Orchestra, Symphony and Youth Orchestra of the Palermo Conservatory, Mediterranean Philharmonic Orchestra, Massimo Youth Orchestra, Massimo Kids Orchestra, Salvatore Cicero Chamber Orchestra, Mediterranean Youth Orchestra, Franco Zappalà Theater Orchestra; Enarmonic Duo, Contemporary Music Ensemble, Giovanni Sollima, Carmelo Caruso, Salvo Greco, Silviu Dima, Gioacchino Di Stefano, Gaspare D'Amato, Kristi Curb, Giuseppe Nastro, Alberto Maniaci, Michele De Luca, Sébastien Bagnoud, Maurizio and Luigi Rocca, Giorgio Buttitta, Silvia Vaglica, Alessia Sparacio, Valentina Vitti, Victorina Eeckeloo, Michela Guarrera, Rocco Tarantino, Teresa Di Lorenzo Souza and others.
He carries out an intense activity as a militant musicologist, participating in conferences, meetings, listening guides and writing for numerous musicological publications and magazines. He has published: “Live portraits. The music of Marco Betta, Giovanni D’Aquila and Riccardo Riccardi" (ABEditore, Milan 2012);"Vespers op. 37 by Sergej Rachmaninov" (ABEditore, Milan 2014); "Chronological musical aid" (P&H Edizioni, Palermo 2015); "Rachmaninov: last of the Romantics and first of the Moderns" in "In the name of Aleksandr and in the shadow of Claude" (edited by Piero Mioli, Patròn Editore, Bologna 2017); “Musica e Senso” (with Pier Paolo Bellini and Amalia Collisani, P&H Edizioni, Palermo 2018). He was Editorial Director of the musicological series “Pentagrams and Words” (Palermo).
He edited the Catalogs of the works of contemporary composers Marco Betta, Giovanni D’Aquila, Alberto Maniaci, Pippo Molino and Riccardo Riccardi.
About the music
His poetics is based on simple tonal or modal harmonies but dirty with external notes; his melodic lines tend to Endless in a combination of ascending and descending scales and epic melodic lines. Within a minimal structure Simone harmonises the melody based on the tonal and modal tradition but innervating all his music with twentieth-century traits.His search for Infinity forces him to always look for new timbres and new harmonies that cover his melancholy melodic lines but always to research positivity. His models are Arvo Part, Henryk Gorecky, Vladimir Martynov, Max Richter and Johann Johansson but also film composers like Hans Zimmer, James Horner and John Barry.
In Piraino's music there is a new born sound that underlies the articulation of the slim musical poetics: it is the concordance of the thing of the work with the event that brings to light what until then, until the unveiling of the event, had remained veiled. (Renzo Cresti - Musicologist)
In Piraino's music there is a sense of serenity, also because it manages to captivate with beauty and the lyricism of his truly suggestive melodies (Riccardo Viagrande)
Simone Piraino’s music is like a sea, the sea of Sicily: his compositions are on a journey in which music is the center of a quest for light and spirituality. In each composition of this work, we can perceive willingness to evoke the destiny of remote times, partly lost, made even more contemporary by the strength of memory that rises powerfully, creating refractions and reverberations with our time. (Marco Betta - Composer)
The minimalist approach of Piraino's compositional technique finds references, in addition to the well-known American musical current, to established musicians such as Einaudi, Cacciapaglia, Bosso and others. (Cesare Guzzardella - Music Journalist)