Michele Sganga
I was born in 1978 and I am based in Rome, Italy. I have a formal academic education as a pianist and composer. However, since the very beginning of my career, I cultivated a strong interest in creative contaminations, collaborating with artists from different disciplines and experimenting with different musical genres.
My repertoire as a pianist goes from Bach to contemporary music, with a predilection for Chopin and Liszt. As a composer, I wrote - and still writing - music for theater, cinema, and television, and chamber music for voice and various instruments.
I got my piano degree summa cum laude under the guidance of Maria Teresa Carunchio at the Santa Cecilia Conservatoire in Rome, where I also attended Composition studies. Afterwards, I joined post-graduate courses and received prizes and awards in National and International competitions, such as the first prize at Don Matteo Colucci, in Fasano; Harmonie, in Rome; Città di Barletta; Città di Caserta.
As a piano soloist, the most significant productions are: the two CDs Animale Musicale - Biodiversità al pianoforte (Musical Animal. Biodiversity at the piano, 2012), and Le ragioni del canto. Franz Liszt (Reasons for the Chant. Franz Liszt, 2014), both performed live at La Milanesiana Festival (2013 and 2014), and recorded for the label Officina della Musica; the radio show La stanza della musica (The Music Room, for RAI National Radio3); my solo recital dedicated to Europe (Europiano), that I played at the opening of the chamber season 2014-2015 of Krakow Philharmonic.
In 2002 I and Matteo de Rossi created Sonicview - Sound Factory, a music project born to produce music being constantly on the side of artists and performers. Among the many productions of Sonicview, those made for major record labels stand out, such as Franco Margola - Le Opere per Tre Chitarre (Franco Margola - The Works for Three Guitars, 2006), Sor: Complete Fantasias for Guitar (produced for Brilliant Classics, 2011), Gian Francesco Malipiero - Impressioni dal vero, Pause del silenzio (Gian Francesco Malipiero - Impressions From Life, Pauses of silence, produced for NAXOS, 2011).
As a composer, in 2010 I was invited by the Embassy of Poland at the Holy See to perform my original piano Hommage to Chopin, composed for the closing of the Fryderyk Chopin’s Bicentennial.
Among my original compositions, I’d like to mention: the original soundtrack for the documentary Il testimone passato (Witness of the Past), included in the special RAI National TV series broadcasted on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of Italy from the fascism (Rai Storia, 2015); Magnificat for Soprano, piano, and violin, chosen to be the soundtrack for Adriano Marenco's play La casta morta (The Dead Caste, Patas Arriba Teatro 2015), and performed in 2017 at the prestigious Soli Deo Gloria Festival in Reggio Emilia.
I also obtained a full-honours degree in History of Music at the Sapienza University of Rome, discussing the dissertation L’orizzonte filosofico di Luigi Nono (Luigi Nono’s Philosophical Horizon) with the supervision of prof. Pierluigi Petrobelli.
I split my daytime between work as a piano soloist and composition activities in Italy and abroad, and writing scientific and popular essays about opera and other musical topics. Some of my scientific papers have been translated into Polish, such as the ones about Luigi Nono, Gioachino Rossini, Fryderyk Chopin, and Andrej Tarkovskij. I am also an author of musicological texts for a successful editorial serial about opera.
In the last years I continued focusing on soundtracks, such as the ballet Anamoni (Compagnia Matroos, 2017). In 2018 Sinfonica Edizioni published my Biologie per chitarra (Biologie for Guitar), and in 2019 - commissioned by University College London - I composed an original soundtrack for Guazzoni's silent movie Cajus Julius Caesar. In 2020 I composed some tracks for the movie Extraliscio. Punk da Balera, presented at the 79th Venice International Film Festival, and I released an album of songs for piano solo: Canzoni senza parole (Songs Without Words, Lumi Edizioni Musicali).
2022 was a very eventful year, which led me, among other things, to releases two albums: Magnificat - cantata per soprano e pianoforte (Magnificat - A Cantata for Soprano and Piano, Lumi Edizioni Musicali, 2022) with Sara Della Porta, and Il sorriso di Cassandra (Cassandra's smile, Lumi Edizioni Musicali, 2023), the original soundtrack of the video-documentary dedicated to Pier Paolo Pasolini.
I am also founder of Lumi Edizioni Musicali, an independent publishing house and record label that aims to give visibility to independent and innovative musicians from all over the world.