Michael Galasso violin solo

In Spoleto, on July 1st, Michael Galasso will be performing music composed between 1973 and 2000.

Composer, violinist and orchestra director, Michael Galasso was born in Louisiana in 1949. Member of New York’s avant-garde’s movement in the early Seventies, he chose to move to Europe in 1995. He lived in Florence, Venice and Paris, where he still resides today. A soloist at the tender age of 11, he has written for the stage, the big screen, ballets and sound installations. As a violin virtuoso, for over 30 years he has been experimenting melodic and rhythmic syntheses in which his affinity with European baroque music meets Cajun, Zydeco, r´n´b, jazz and rock influences, as well as the traditions of the Middle East and Central Asia.Michael Galasso began his composing career writing scores for Robert Wilson’s earlier works, among these "A Letter for Queen Victoria" (1974, world debut at Spoleto). For Wilson he also wrote the scores for Ibsen´s "The Lady of the Sea" (1998, Ferrara), Strindberg´s "The Dream" (1998, Stockholm, London, New York, Paris,) Chekhov´s "Three Sisters" (2001, Stockholm), "Doktor Caligari" (2002, Berlin), "Les Fables de la Fontaine" for the Comédie-Française (2004-2008, Paris), "2 Lips and Dancers in Space", (2004, Holland, Belgium and Hong-Kong), Ibsen´s "Peer Gynt" (2005, Oslo), and also Heiner Müller’s Quartett with Isabelle Huppert (2006-2007, Paris.)
His works for the big screen include Chunking Express and the extraordinary Wong Kar-Wai film In the Mood for Love. He also wrote the soundtracks The Rachewsky Tango, A Common Thread, Histoire d’un Secret, Séraphine, as well the scores for various Turkish and Iranian films.
His musical and sound installations have been exhibited at New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2000, Bilbao’s Guggeheim in 2001 during the Giorgio Armani retrospective (and the following tour in Berlin, London, Rome, Tokyo, Shangai, Milan.) In 1998 he directed the Fabrica Musica in Treviso. He wrote music for choreographers as Karole Armitage, Andy DeGroat and Lucinda Childs. His second album for ECM Records, High Lines, was released in March 2005. He held concerts as a solo violinist in New York, Paris, Rome, Venice, Berlin, Düsseldorf, Köln, Brussels, Amsterdam, Zurich.