Luigi Ceccarelli (born April 20, 1953 in Rimini, Italy) is an Italian composer
Luigi Ceccarelli completed his musical studies in the ‘70s at the Gioachino Rossini Conservatory of Pesaro (Italy) where he studied Electronic Music and Composition with Walter Branchi, Giuliano Zosi and Guido Baggiani. His career as a composer began in 1975, and was strongly influenced by digital technology and research into Sound Spatialisation. In addition to his exclusively musical work right from the start he dedicated a significant part of his professional activity to experimental theatre, contemporary dance, cinema and visual arts.
After moving to Rome in 1978 he began to collaborate with the Gruppo di lavoro intercodice - ALTRO (inter-codex work-group), an artistic association led by the painter Achille Perilli, and during this period his contacts with artists in various other disciplines allowed him to develop forms of music that were closely related to the visual arts and the theater. With ALTRO he wrote and performed the music for the performance Abominable A, which was staged at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni in Rome. In 1981 ALTRO became a dance company with the name of AltroTeatro and, with the choreographer Lucia Latour, Ceccarelli wrote and performed the music for the group’s performances until 1994. These included the show Anihccam dedicated to the Futurist artist Fortunato Depero and staged at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, which launched Ceccarelli’s international career.
In 1994 he made the radio-film (a story told only with sounds and music) La Guerra dei Dischi (The War of the Records), which was commissioned by Rai Radio 3 and based on a text by Stefano Benni. This was the beginning of Ceccarelli’s research into the relationship between music and recited texts, which led the composer to create a series of radio plays and audio plays for Rai Radio 3.
In 1996 his work Birds for bass clarinet and birdsong was awarded the first prize in the competition of the IMEB (Institut international de musique électroacoustique de Bourges - France). This institution then invited Ceccarelli to work in Bourges and commissioned various electroacoustic works from him, including De Zarb à Daf for Iranian percussion instruments.