David Monacchi
"In the field, listening is a creative process, and recording is, by its nature, an act of shaping the environment... My intention is to offer the listener a new experience of nature. My ultimate vision as a composer is to build a musical system that enhances our listening sensitivity and reveals the density, beauty and phenomena of natural sound."
Monacchi is Professor of Electronic Music at the Conservatory of Music of Foggia, and Acting Chair at the University of Macerata and the Conservatory of Pesaro (Italy). Currently, he is on a visiting assignment as a Fulbright Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary research focus is recording natural sonic environments throughout the world with cutting-edge field recording techniques to create music for sound installations, museums, and experimental and new music concerts. For nearly two decades, he has recorded in Europe, Africa, South America, and North America, and used the recordings as material for detailed lab analyses and eco-acoustic composition.
He traveled to the Brazilian Amazon in 2001 in collaboration with Greenpeace, in order to collect high definition sound portraits from an area of primary equatorial rainforest. With 30 hours of extraordinary sound recordings, he composed the eco-acoustic opera entitled “Fragments of a Sonic World in Extinction,” which he performed in theatres and contemporary music venues in Europe and the United States. He has performed his music in 180 concerts and installations since 1989, in places like Kryptonale (Berlin, Germany), Teatro Groggia (Venice, Italy), Nuova Consonanza, Tevereterno and Notte Bianca (Rome, Italy), La Via Lattea (Lugano, Switzerland), Community Art Council (Vancouver, Canada), Nuit Blanche (Paris, France), Ear to the Earth (New York, U.S.), Dangerous Curve (Los Angeles, U.S.), CNMAT (Berkeley, U.S.) and other international venues. Several international radio stations have broadcast his music. In 2005, his research project “Un Teatro Bio-Acustico” on the Foreste Casentinesi National Park became part of the Italian ‘world heritage’ proposition to the UNESCO. Since 2005, he has been the musical consultant for the project Tevereterno, Kristin Jones’ large-scale site-specific project on the Tiber River in Rome, and he is the co-founder of Bella Gerit, a project aimed at conducting first-ever recordings of the Renaissance music of Urbino.
As a recording engineer, he directs Coclearia – a mobile recording studio, which has worked on (50+) productions of Early, Classic, and Contemporary music; in addition, he has collaborated with the Italian National RAI Radio3 for recordings and consultancies. As a flautist, he has performed widely in ancient, traditional, and new music contexts. His music has been published by Ants Records, Bella Gerit and Domani Musica.
His honors include the Erato Farnesina Fellowship from the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for the World Soundscape Project (Vancouver), the Fulbright Research Scholarship to work at the CNMAT- University of California, Berkeley, and prizes from the Russolo-Pratella Competition (Italy), Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland), Multiple Sound Festival (Holland). His music was also selected by the jury of the Bourges International Grand Prix of Electro-acoustic Music.
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