Luciano Chessa

Luciano Chessa (born 12 January 1971, in Sassari, Italy)^{[citation needed]} is a musician, performance/visual/installation artist, and musicologist.

As a composer, conductor, pianist, and musical saw / Vietnamese dan bau soloist, Luciano Chessa has been active in Europe, the U.S., Australia, and South America. Compositions include a piano and percussion duet after Pier Paolo Pasolini's "Petrolio", written for Sarah Cahill and Chris Froh and presented in 2004 at the American Academy in Rome, "Il pedone dell’aria" ("air walker") for orchestra and double children choir, premiered in 2006 at the Auditorium of Turin's Lingotto and subsequently released on DVD, and two works in collaboration with artist Terry Berlier: "Louganis" for piano and TV/VCR combo (performed at the Monday Evening Concerts in 2010) and "Inkless Imagination IV" for viola, mini-bass musical saw, turntables, piano, percussion, FM radios, blimp and video projection (premiered at UC Davis' Mondavi Center by the Empyrean Ensemble).

Among his compositions should be mentioned a large orchestral work commissioned by the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino, Italy and titled "Ragazzi incoscienti scarabocchiano sulla porta di un negozio fallito an.1902" (reckless children scribble on the door of a failed shop in 1902), "Movements", a multimedia work for 16mm film, dan bau and amplified film projectors produced in collaboration with filmmaker Rick Bahto, "Come un’infanzia", a guitar plus string quartet piece for the Left Coast Chamber Ensemble, and A Heavenly Act, an opera commissioned by SFMOMA and Opera Parallèle with a libretto by Gertrude Stein and video by Kalup Linzy. A Heavenly Act premiered on 19 August 2011, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco, in a staged production by the Ensemble Parallèle, conducted by Nicole Paiement and featuring Linzy.

Recent premieres include "LIGHTEST", a SFMOMA commission presented on 16 November 2013, at the SF Columbarium, and "Set and Setting", a San Francisco Contemporary Music Players commission presented on 18 February 2014, at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. Chessa's first record, "Humus" (1997), was released on the Italian label Destination X. His "Peyrano", which includes recordings produced in the 90s, has been re-released in March 2012 by the Swiss label Skank Bloc Records.

From the year 1999 to 2004, he has been a member of the UC Davis Gospel Choir, where he served as assistant conductor to Calvin Lymos, the choir's principal director.^{[citation needed]}

As a musicologist, his areas of research competence include twentieth-century, experimental, and late fourteenth-century music (Ars Subtilior). His research on Italian Futurism, which he has presented and published internationally, has shown for the first time the occult relationship between Luigi Russolo's intonarumori and Leonardo da Vinci's mechanical noisemakers. He is author of Luigi Russolo Futurist. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult, the first monograph ever to be dedicated to Russolo and The Art of Noises. Published by the University of California Press, the book has received enthusiastic reviews:

"With meticulous attention to primary sources, galvanised by daring leaps of imagination, [Chessa] reveals an array of unorthodox ideas, creative tensions, and contradictions within Russolo's milieu." [...] "Chessa's prose embodies the sheer pleasure of discovery through research." [...] "The frenzied pace of Chessa's writing retains a visionary edge throughout, and the book itself could be seen as an example of synthesis and dynamism." (The Wire, June 2012)

"The most comprehensive source of Russolo available in English." (Examiner.com)