Carmine-Emanuele Cella was born in Italy in 1976. A composer and researcher, he works on the relationship between mathematics and music. He holds degrees from the Conservatorio G. Rossini di Pesaro in piano, computer music, and composition, as well as a masters in composition from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, where he studied under Azio Corghi. Additionally, he studied philosophy and mathematics, and earned a doctorate in mathematical logic from the University of Bologna with a doctoral dissertation titled On Symbolic Representations of Music (2011).

Cella’s compositions have been honored with many prizes, including first prize in the Rossini Composition Competition in 1998, first prize in the Egidio Carella Composition Competition in 2010, and second prize in the ICOMS Composition Competition in 2010. In 2006, he was a semi-finalist in the Queen Elisabeth Competition, and in 2007 in the George Enescu Competition. In 2009, his La fin du jour was premiered by the SWR Orchestra of Stuttgart, and in 2011 he was a finalist in the Isang Yun International Music Prize in South Korea for his piece The Manhattan distance.

In 2007, he was awarded the E. Conestabile Fellowship from the Accademia Musicale Chigiana and the G. Guarino fellowship from the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome; in 2008, he was awarded the prestigious Petrassi Composition Prize by then President of the Italian Republic Giorgio Napolitano. In 2015, he was awarded the Una Vita Nella Musica Giovani Prize by the Teatro la Fenice in Venice.

In 2007-2008, Cella traveled to Paris to work as a researcher in the IRCAM’s Analysis/Synthesis team, studying audio indexing. In 2011-2012, at IRCAM, he designed the live electronics for the opera Limbus-Limbo, by Stefano Gervasoni. That same year he was a composer-in-residence at the IRCAM, and during that time his piece Gia’ s’ottenebra il giorno premiered at the ManiFeste 2012 Festival-Academy, which also commissioned Reflets de l’ombre for the Orchestre de Radio France, which premiered in June 2013 at the Salle Pleyel. In 2013-2014 he was selected to be a resident at the Casa de Velazquez in Madrid. In 2015-2016, he conducted research in applied mathematics for a post-doctorate directed by Stéphane Mallat at the École Normale Supérieure de Paris. In 2016, he held a residency at the American Academy in Rome. Since January 2019, he has been an assistant professor of music and technology at the University of California, Berkeley, as well as lead researcher at the Center for New Music and Audio Technology (CNMAT). Since 2020, Cella is also professor of computer music at Conservatorio G. Rossini in Pesaro. In 2022 he has been the recipient of the prestigious Traiettorie music prize for composition for his researches.

Currently, the areas on which he is working are the application of artificial intelligence to music creation (notably through the development of Orchid, an assisted orchestration software), instrument augmentation and the definition of mathematical models for the representation of sound through deep learning techniques and machine learning methods for computer-assisted orchestration.