MDI Ensemble

The Milan based mdi ensemble was formed in 2002 from the idea of six young musicians sharing their common passion for contemporary music, thanks to the support of Musica d’Insieme Association. From the very beginning, the ensemble established close collaborations with many renewed composers such as Helmut Lachenmann, Sylvano Bussotti, Gérard Pesson, Pierluigi Billone, Fabio Vacchi and Mauro Lanza, as well as premiering several new works by young composers emerging from the international scene. Described from the Los Angeles Times as “astonishingly competent”, mdi ensemble is committed to chamber music repertoire, taking advantage from different feelings whilst aiming for a common interpretation. At the same time, the ensemble frequently collaborates with eminent conductors such as Beat Furrer, Yoichi Sugiyama, Robert HP Platz, Marino Formenti and Pierre-André Valade. mdi ensemble regularly appears at some of the most relevant Italian festivals and venues: festival Milano Musica, MiTo Settembre Musica, Ravenna Festival, Venice Biennale, PAC and Teatro Filodrammatici in Milan, Mittelfest, Lingotto Musica Turin, Japanese Institute and America Academy in Rome, festival Traiettorie in Parma, Amici della Musica in Palermo. A prèmiere of the video – opera L’amor che move il sole e l’altre stelle by Adriano Guarnieri marks the ensemble debut at Ravenna Festival in 2015. In 2010, mdi was invited as ensemble-in-residence by the festival Koiné at Teatro dal Verme in Milan, playing among others Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire in a stage version realized by Sylvano Bussotti in partnership with the Academy of Teatro alla Scala. mdi ensemble has recently extended until 2017 his collaboration as artist-in-residence with festival Milano Musica, which started in 2012 supported by Fondazione Cariplo: upcoming projects foresee focuses on Lachenmann, Netti, Maderna. Recent highlights throughout Europe include concerts at Tonhalle in Dusseldorf, Konzerthaus in Dortmund, Japanese and Italian Institutes in Koln, SWR Stuttgart, ORF Innsbruck, Societé de Musique Contemporaine in Lausanne, festival MusicAperta in Winterthur, Teatro Forteza in Majorca. mdi also performed overseas at Los Angeles County Museum of Arts and participated as ensemble-in-residence to the 2013 Chelsea Music Festival in New York City. In 2008, the ensemble made its debut in Tokyo. mdi concerts have been broadcasted by RadioTre, Rai International, Limen and SWR. The first mdi ensemble recording, Antiterra by Stefano Gervasoni (AEON), has been awarded by Academy Charles Cros the prestigious “Coup de Coeur – Musique contemporaine 2009”. Its discography also includes monographic CDs dedicated to Sylvano Bussotti’s and Marco Momi’s music (Stradivarius), as well as the latest released albums Dulle Griet by Giovanni Verrando (AEON) and Electric Blueprint by Misato Mochizuki (NEOS). Since 2008, the strings from mdi ensemble have been working on RepertorioZero, a project based on electric, amplified and concrete instrumentation. R0 performed at festival MiTo, Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, Tonhalle in Zurich, Venice Biennale and festival Milano Musica as artist-in-residence from 2012 to 2014. RepertorioZero received in 2011 the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale “for the own innovative line of research – in the way to work with the music of today – which tends to go beyond the experience of the traditional avant-garde, which confronts itself with a totally new repertoire and with the necessity to find solutions to the numerous variables of contemporary music”.