The Grand Suite, for 5 performers (flute, clarinet/bass clarinet, violin cello, piano with small percussion) and a reciting voice, is fromopera Garibaldi en Sicile, loosely based on Alexandre Dumas′ father′s live correspondence of the Expedition of the Thousand, collected in the 1861 volume Les Garibaldiens. Commissioned to Marcello Panni by the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, it was performed in that theater in April 2005.

This Grande Suite, a reduction for small ensemble of some pieces fromopera, was created on the occasion of the celebrations of the 150th anniversary of the Unification of Italy on commission from the Contempoartensemble of Florence. The partial premiere took place to Florence on November 27, 2010 on the occasion of the 2010 Festa della Toscana and the premiere in the complete version on January 9, 2011 for Radio 3′s Concerti del Quirinale, live on radio.

The Suite is composed from 7 pieces, Aux Armes!, Chanson d′adieu, Ricercare nocturne, Fanfare, Couplets entrecoupés, Ode à la Liberté, Marche des Chemises Rouges, accompanied by the reading of texts by George Sand on the Hero of Two Worlds, Alexandre Dumas father, and a passage from the famous speech delivered from Victor Hugo to Jersey during a fundraising conference to in favor of the Thousand in May 1860. Cavour′s secret correspondence is cited, as well as to proclamations and hymns of Garibaldi′s epic.

CONTEMPOARTENSEMBLE founded in 1992 on the initiative of Mauro Ceccanti, who is to still its stable and musical director, is a nucleus of soloists to variable composition that has chosen as its own sphere the historical musical twentieth century and the emerging contemporary to international level. Based on the assumption of consonance and contiguity between music and visual arts, the ensemble opera often in close contact with contemporary art centers, such as museums and other significant venues elected from time to time in connection with cultural events and exhibitions of avant-garde works. The record production has also developed under the sign of a close relationship with some of the leading exponents of contemporary art who have been entrusted with the graphic design of its CDs: from Sol Lewitt (the ARTS CD was the first taken into the collection of the famous MOMA in New York) to Pistoletto, Folon, Buren, Richter and Karavan.

Contempoartensemble, which has had the support and collaboration of Luciano Berio, honorary president, since its founding, today counts on the friendship of composers such as Peter Maxwell Davies, Mauricio Sotelo, Henri Pousseur, Salvatore Sciarrino, Nicola Sani, Fabio Vacchi, Giorgio Battistelli, Marcello Panni, Sylvano Bussotti, Adriano Guarnieri, Luca Lombardi, Ivan Fedele, Michele dall′Ongaro, Luca Mosca, Matteo d′Amico, and Alessandro Solbiati, many of whom have dedicated compositions to the ensemble and its director.

He recorded Fabio Vacchi's music for the soundtrack of Ermanno Olmi's film "Il mestiere delle Armi," which was awarded a David di Donatello in 2002, and he made the world's first recording of Salvatore Sciarrino's Aspern Suite.

Contempoartensemble concerts have often been recorded and broadcast from Radio Three Suite.

He is a regular guest of the Maggio Fiorentino Festival, where in recent years he has presented monographic portraits of Ivan Fedele, Peter Maxwell Davies, Kaija Saariahao ("Visual Concert," video images made for CE from Jean Baptiste Barrière), and in the 2011 edition of the Festival: Steve Reich - 75, on the occasion of the New York composer′s 75th birthday .

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MAURO CECCANTI graduated in violin from the Conservatorio "L.Cherubini" in Florence, where he taught until 2009, and was a member of the Solisti Veneti and until 1981 of the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino as "concertino" of the first violins. He specialized in conducting with Franco Ferrara to Rome, at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena and to Hilversum in Holland with Kyrill Kondrashin. Fundamental were the meetings to Milan with Carlo Maria Giulini in the ′80s and the friendship and collaboration with Luciano Berio and Bruno Bartoletti.

In 1992 he founded the Contempoartensemble, an ensemble specializing in contemporary music with which he carries out an intense concert activity in Italy and abroad, earning the attention and appreciation from of the most qualified international critics;

He has collaborated with directors and set designers such as Pier′Alli, Luigi Squarzina, Virginio Puecher, Egisto Marcucci, Sylvano Bussotti, Fernando Farulli, Giuliano Scabia, Giuseppe Di Leva , Lele Luzzati, Virgilio Sieni, Alessio Pizzech, Mimmo Cuticchio, and Federico Tiezzi.

With Piero Farulli, he was one of the founders of the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, where he created and directed the Orchestra dei Ragazzi and the Orchestra Vincenzo Galilei, contributing greatly to the school′s growth and visibility; he conducted the New Year′s Eve concert in the Salone dei Cinquecento in Palazzo Vecchio for 15 years and later at the Teatro Comunale in Florence.

He is artistic director of the Contempoartefestival Florence-Prato, dedicated exclusively to contemporary music, and the Suoni e Colori in Toscana Festival.

His recordings, in addition to CDs with the Contempoartensemble, include two rare works by Pietro Mascagni, Il Piccolo Marat and Zanetto, for Foné and Bongiovanni.

ANDREA SIRIANNI

Andrea Sirianni was born to Catanzaro in 1985.He began his acting studies at Salvatore Emilio Corea's Enzo Corea Theater School.

Graduated to Rome in 2009 from Giorgina Cantalini´s Academy International Acting School, took part to workshops with Lena Lessing, Micke Klingvall, Margarete Assmuth, Alessio Bergamo and Michael Margotta.

He interprets texts by Shakespeare, Eliot, Brecht, Sartre, Schnitzler, Ionesco and Robert Thomas in important Italian festivals and theaters. His attention to both theatrical and concert research lead him to to collaborate in the creation of performances-concerts with composer Francesco Libetta.

Recites texts by Gabrilele D´Annunzio and Arrigo Boito at the Vittoriale degli Italiani Amphitheater in Eleonora Duse: dreams of the seasons to music by Wagner, Mascagni and Debussy.

She is a guest of the Miami International Piano Festival where she performs the melologue for piano and voice Histoire de Babar: le petit éléphant by Francis Poulenc.

He is the star of the popularopera Ottocento staged at the Auditorium Conciliazione in Rome with artistic direction by Franco Battiato.

Engaged permanently in a repertoire between the nineteenth century and contemporary productions, in theater music and dance performances with the company Balletto del Sud, he plays the role of the sultan in Shéhérazade and the Thousand and One Nights alongside the dance star Luciana Savignano, in the theaters of Lecce, Cavallino, Foggia, San Severo, Syracuse and Savona directed by Fredy Franzutti.He is currently on national tour with the Contempoartensemble orchestra with O Roma, o morte! - Grande suite from Marcello Panni´sopera Garibaldi en Sicile, in which he recites texts by Luigi Mercantini, Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Alexandre Dumas father, Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour and Giuseppe Garibaldi; The concert repeats to Florence, Palermo, and to Rome in the Cappella Paolina of Palazzo Quirinale, with live radio broadcast on Radio3.

DISCOGRAPHY

for the ARTS record label:

Salvatore Sciarrino Introduction All′oscuro, Sylvano Bussotti Nascosto, Luciano Berio Differences, Iannis Xenakis Waarg

Mauro Ceccanti director

cover image made from Sol Lewitt for this recording of CE

Salvatore Sciarrino Aspern Suite first world recording

Susanna Rigacci, soprano - Mauro Ceccanti, conductor

Cover image made from Daniel Buren for this recording of CE

Arnold Schoenberg Pierrot Lunaire - Trio op.45

Mauro Ceccanti, conductor Sonia Bergamasco, sprechstimme Pietro De Maria, piano , Trio Artes (Duccio Ceccanti, Alessandro Tampieri, Vittorio Ceccanti)

Cover image made from Jean Michèl Folon for this recording of CE

Luciano Berio Folk Songs, Sequence for viola, Les Mots sont alles...recitative for cello

Pierre Boulez Dérive - Mauro Ceccanti, conductor, Luisa Castellani,voice Sabrina Giuliani viola , Vittorio Ceccanti , cello

Cover image created from Michelangelo Pistoletto for this recording of CE

Bruno Maderna Serenade for a Satellite - Don Perlimplin Mauro Ceccanti, conductor, Roberto Fabbriciani , flute, Sonia Bergamasco, voice

Cover image made from Dani Karavan for this recording of CE

Fabio Vacchi Wanderer Oktet - STRADIVARIUS

Ivan Vandor Portrait: Lines of Horizon monographic CD Mauro Ceccanti, director -VDM RECORDS

Peter Maxwell Davies: Linguae Ignis, Vesalii Icones , Fantasia on to Ground

and Two Pavans - Mauro Ceccanti, director, Vittorio Ceccanti cello - NAXOS

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