Luciano Berio

Luciano Berio was born in Oneglia, Italy. After studies with Ghedini at the Milan Conservatory, he worked for the Italian Broadcasting Corporation from 1953 until 1960, when he founded the Studio di Fonologia and directed a concert series under its name. He has taught in America at Tanglewood, Mills College and Harvard University, and in Europe at Darmstadt and Dartington; from 1965 to 1971 he was a member of the composition faculty of the Juilliard School in New York. He ran the electro-acoustic department of IRCAM in Paris until 1980; in 1981 he founded tempo Reale, an institute for new music, in Florence. In 1982 he became Musical Director of the newly founded Regional Orchestra of Tuscany. In 1984 he was Artistic Director of the Maggio Musicale in Florence. In 1988 he became an Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music, London. He has also been awarded the prestigious Siemens Prize.

Mr. Berio studied initially with his grandfather Adolfo Berio (b. 1847 – d. 1942) and father Ernesto Berio, who were both composers and organists, and he quickly developed an interest in the piano. He studied composition with Giorgio Federico Ghedini and counterpoint with Giulio Cesare Paribeni at the Conservatorio G. Verdi in Milan from 1946–51 and received lessons on serialism from Luigi Dallapiccola at Tanglewood in 1952, on a scholarship from the Koussevitzky Foundation. He also holds honorary doctorates from universities in London (1980), Siena (1995) and Edinburgh and Turin (both 1999).

He was active as a conductor from the late 1960s. He founded the Juilliard Ensemble in New York City in 1967 and served as its conductor from 1967–71. He later served as artistic director of the Israel Chamber Orchestra in 1975, of the Accademia Filarmonica Romana in 1975–76, of the Orchestra Regionale Toscana from 1982–2003, and of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino from 1984–2003.

Mr.Berio also worked as a pianist from the late 1930s to the mid-1940s, but a right-hand injury suffered during service in the Italian military in 1944–45 curtailed his career. He worked as an accompanist, and on occasion as a timpanist, from the mid-1940s to the early 1950s. He co-founded with Bruno Maderna the Studio di Fonologia Musicale for electronic music at RAI in Milan in 1953 and served as its director from 1953–61. Moreover, he served as artistic director of the festival Musik im 21. Jahrhundert organized by Saarländischer Rundfunk in 2000 and of the L'arte della Fuga project in Den Haag, London, Lyon, and Spoleto in 2001.

He taught at Tanglewood in 1960, at Dartington in 1961–62, at Mills College in 1962 and in 1963–64, and at the Juilliard School of Music from 1965–71. He later lectured as Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University in 1993–94. He served as interim director of the Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome in 1999–2000 and as its president and artistic director from 2000–03.