Following two years of a physics degree at the Milan University, Alessandro Solbiati studied piano with Eli Perrota and composition with Sandro Gorli at the conservatory in the same city. From 1977 to 1980, he attended the classes of Franco Donatoni at the Accademia Musicale Chigiana in Sienna.

From 1982 to 1995, Solbiati taught counterpoint and composition at the Giovanni Battista Martini Conservatory in Bologna, before becoming a professor of composition at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan in 1995. In 1996 and 2005, he taught at Centre Acanthes (in Avignon and Metz, respectively), and led master-classes at the Paris Conservatoire (CNSMDP) in 1997 and 2001, at the Lyon Conservatoire (CNSM) in 2003, and at the Mexico Conservatory in 2002.

He has been awarded numerous prizes in Italy, including the Turin International Competition Prize for his String Quartet in 1980, the Rome RAI-Paganini Prize in 1982 for Di luce, and prizes at the Brescia International Karlheinz Stockhausen Competition and the Alfredo Casella Competition in Sienna. In 1989, Attraverso, Solbiati’s first theatrical work, was premiered in Brescia. In the same year, his oratorio Nel deserto was premiered at the Centre Georges Pompidou.

Solbiati’s catalogue comprises some 200 works, performances of which have taken place at the Venice Biennale, IRCAM, Radio-France, the Gulbenkian Foundation in Lisbon, BBC, Huddersfield, Wien Modern, Musica (Strasbourg) and the Holland Festival, and in cities including Sydney, Metz, Zagreb, Stockholm, Maastricht, Moscow, Boston and Mexico. He has been commissioned by la Scala in Milan, RAI, the Santa Cecilia (Rome) and Giuseppe Verdi (Milan) Orchestras, and Ensembles Alternance and 2e2m. He has composed numerous radiophonic works for RAI in collaboration with writer Paola Capriolo, including Frammenti da “Il gigante” (1994), La colomba azzurra (1996) and Con i miei mille occhi (1997).

Alessandro Solbiati has made a significant contribution to solo instrumental and chamber music repertoire, with notable works including Ibi, bone fabricator! for solo flute (2009) and Contrapunctus for flute and violin (2008). He has also written for folk instruments and electronics, e.g., Preludio e canto for bayan and electronics (2005) and Thai song for 52 Thai gongs (2009). Wishing to intensively explore all the possibilities of a given instrument or of his original musical material, several of his pieces exist in multiple versions, such as Nora, for cimbalom and seven instruments (2003), for cimbalom, flute, clarinet and percussion (2004) and for cimbalom and orchestra (2008).

His love of poetry has given rise to numerous settings of texts to music, including the Decima elegia cycle for soprano, baritone, mixed choir and orchestra (1991-1995), on Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Other notable works include Und nun, hommage à Haydn, also a setting Rilke’s writing (2009); Hölderlin Lieder (2000), a setting of Hölderlin; Le réveil de mon âme, a setting of Baudelaire (2001); …e l’altre stelle (2000), a setting of Dante; Ach, so früh (2003), a setting of Christian Adolph Overbeck; and Tre Lieder su George (2006), a setting of Stefan George.

In 2008, the Teatro Verdi in Trieste commissioned Solbiati’s first opera, Il carro e i canti, an adaptation of Alexander Pushkin’s “A Feast in Time of Plague”. The work was premiered in April 2009. Solbiati composed another theatrical work inspired by Russian literature for the premiere of an opera based upon The Grand Inquisitor, and embedded narrative within Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov.