Biography (English)
Composer and performer described as “the new voice of the clarinet” on the front page of De Klarinet Magazine, Luciano is internationally recognised for his groundbreaking contributions to contemporary clarinet music. He starts his career at the young age of twelve debuting at one of the most established halls of his home town Naples and appears on television nationwide live aged twenty-one. Praised by the International Clarinet Association for his “bold and unique” interpretations, he receives a Master’s Degree in Italy, is awarded the Fellow Status of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and, according to the Clarinet & Saxophone Society of Great Britain, he has since “established himself as the friendly face of contemporary clarinet”. He has been introduced by BBC Radio as “one of Europe’s leading exponents of jazz clarinet” and his repertoire also embraces Brahms, Catelnuovo-Tedesco, Weber, Schumann, Debussy, rarely performed music by living composers and recordings of music by Stravinsky, Cage, Berio, Arnold, Messiaen, Francis Poulenc.
Luciano has defined himself as a solo artist, not solely as an instrumentalist, but a complete musician in line with the tradition set by the great maestri of the past. A former Clarinet Professor at the Leeds College of Music (UK’s largest conservatoire) and much appreciated for his strong commitment to philosophy, Luciano is one of a few specialists of classical, jazz and contemporary music at HE level and has held the only existing position of jazz-clarinet lecturer in the UK for several years developing a portfolio that features the best universities/colleges of the UK and Brazil. His areas of research include extended techniques and new compositions for solo clarinet also presented during his master-classes and lecture-recitals (in the UK, Europe and South America) and regularly premiered at St Martin in the Fields in London, Cambridge University and overseas. He has been touring extensively Europe and South America, focusing primarily on his own music and performing at venues as diverse as: the South Bank Centre, Barber Institute of Fine Arts, St George’s Bristol, Edinburgh Festival, King’s Hall, Edinburgh University, SESI International Series and the Centro Cultural in Sao Paulo, European Clarinet Festival, St David’s Cathedral Festival in Wales, Politeama Theatre in Naples, American Cathedral in Paris.
Aside from his renowned solo clarinet work, Luca has appeared on TV programs nationwide (RTE Ireland, SKY Brazil, RAI Television Italy), collaborated with orchestras also as a soloist (Italy, Republic of Ireland, Brazil) and with chamber music ensembles (also recording live for BBC Radio 3 at the Royal Festival Hall).
As a composer, Luciano has a rather eclectic approach to music-making. Besides what he calls “performance pieces” (i.e. original material or arrangements he has written for his own performances) one can find several short compositions, highly condensed miniature pieces that range from more experimental and ground-breaking clarinet solo pieces informed by his research to more melodic music for clarinet and piano or other chamber ensembles. In terms of aesthetics, post-modernism is a good way to define most of his work. The “ironic re-elaboration” of the styles of the past is evident in music that is often characterised by a peculiar sense of humour often using the form of the musical parody, most of all the “window form”, where the artist “opens up” a new door to a different “world”. For this reason, one can find the use of music quotations from major composers or folkloric tunes, but also the creation of new folk tunes as intended by Bartok. The use of the “alea” is quite frequent in Luciano’s music for he aims at making the poetic gesture and the reproduction of the composition coincide making the piece unique every time it is performed. In his specific case, we find passages of “real-time” variations/permutations of an “incipit” (a short idea, often a segment of the chromatic scale) and impromptu cadenzas. This also explains the use of the basso continuo he makes in fact inspired by the “sonata a solo” of the barocco era (for violin and b.c.). In terms of harmonies, Luciano uses dissonant chords not connected to each other using the criteria of functional harmony. Instead, one finds chromatic chords, polytonality, clusters, passing notes ascending or descending chromatically and a peculiar use of quartal harmonies or mirror chords combined with edgy rhythms. To him there is no need to emancipate dissonances, on the contrary, he wants dissonances and different shades of chromatic colours eventually releasing the tension on a more conventional chord. It is really on the compositions for clarinet solo and clarinet ensemble where we find more experimental and ground-breaking material. Informed by his research, we find lots of microtonal music where he draws in more pitches (quarter tones and microtones) to the chromatic scale generally using them as grace notes or embellishments. Often Luciano exploits a small cell made of a few notes (generally a section of the chromatic scale) that he then varies, modulating them or transposing them or using one of the above-mentioned sound effects. On most pieces there is clearly a gravitational pull, that is a note that acts as an anchor around which the music gravitates.