Biography

Silvio Palmieri received his musical studies at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec in Montréal where he studied composition and analyses with Gilles Tremblay; counterpoint and orchestration with Clermont Pépin, electroacoustic with Micheline Coulombe-Saint-Marcoux and Yves Daoust, choral conducting with Marcel Laurencelle and voice with Jeanine Lachance. He took part in, among others, ARRAYMUSIC of Toronto’s Composer’s Workshop and the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal’s Ateliers-concert.

His works have been performed primarily by the Ensemble contemporain de Montréal with conductor Véronique Lacroix; Les événements du neuf conducted by Lorrain Vaillancourt; the SMCQ Ensemble; ARRAYMUSIC of Toronto; the Ondes Martenot Ensemble of Montréal; ondes Martenot performer Estelle Lemire, the soprano Natalie Choquette, the Claudel Quartet, pianists André Ristic and Marc Courroux, trombonist Alain Trudel, the Alizée flute ensemble, violinist Silvia Mandolini, soprano Chantal Lambert and the pianist Angela Tosheva in Montréal, Toronto, Paris, Rome and Milan.

His repertoire includes the opera Elia (ECM commission); Versetto pour the Ensemble baroque de Montréal; two important cycles, the first, Duchamp unfinished, and the second, Pasolini. He has written many preludes for piano including Prélude V Mistero, Prélude VI Alba, Prélude X-paraphrase pasoliniene; Poesiole Notturne I-II-III for soprano and chamber orchestra (Radio-Canada commission) based on three sonnets by Pier Paolo Pasolini: these works are part of an important cycle devoted to the poetic and multi-formal world of the great Italian poet-play write and film maker Pasolini;  Symphonie portuaire 1999 (Radio-Canada commission) for boat horns, train whistles, and the Montréal Notre-Dame Basilica’s chucrh bells. Florilège for flute octet (Ensemble Alizée commission). He has also composed the soundtrack for the videos Les années Jules-Félix by Josette Bélanger, Anémic-Cinéma by Marcel Duchamp; and electroacoustic works such as Dada Musik (a large electroacoustic fresco for the CBC radio show Le Navire Night, produced in collaboration with Marc Hyland) and Liberté en Cage for the ECM’s event Cage en Liberté which won the Prix Opus for the musical event of the year.