Ivan Fedele was born in Italy in 1953. He attended the Conservatorio Guiseppe Verdi in Milan, where he studied piano with Bruno Canino, graduating in 1972. He continued his studies in composition at the Conservatorio with Renato Dionisi and Azio Corghi, receiving a second degree in 1981, and then at the Accademia Santa Cecilia in Rome with Franco Donatoni (1981-1982). From 1974 to 1985, he also studied electronic music at the Milan Conservatory and philosophy at the University of Milan. The Gaudeamus Prize, which he was awarded in Amsterdam in 1981 for Primo Quartetto and Chiari, brought him international renown.

Fedele’s father, a mathematician, shared his love of mathematics with his son, which shows through in Fedele’s research, particularly in his deepening and application of the concept of “spatialization” – Duo en résonance, Ali di Cantor, Donacis Ambra – the creation of a “library” of creative procedures, and the design of a prototype for a “granular synthesizer” like the one used to create the electronic elements in Richiamo (1993).

Capt-Actions, which premiered at the Arsenal de Metz in 2005, was the first composition ever to use a new system of “sensors” that could transmit data from a musical gesture to a computer and “interpret” that gesture in real time according to schematics for sound modulation that are programmed by the composer ahead of time. This new technology, developed by Thierry Coduys in the Kitchen Studios in Paris, opened the way to hitherto unexplored possibilities in composition.

Ivan Fedele’s oeuvre is built around several core features: a constant interaction in his compositions between organizing principles and freedom; a desire to transmit easily identifiable forms without sacrificing any richness in the musical writing; a highly musical relationship to technology - which is justifiable when it brings composition and performance practice closer together, when it facilitates calculations in composition and makes the phases of compositional research audible, so to speak, and when it contributes, above all, to an aesthetically convincing sound. Fedele, to this end, seeks to create new formal strategies that combine certain narrative aspects of the classical-romantic symphonic model and innovations in writing or new electronic media from the past half-century.

From chamber music to orchestral works to concertos, his compositions have been performed in Europe’s biggest contemporary music festivals, in collaboration with conductors such as Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Saalonen, David Robertson, Pierre-André Valade, and Pascal Rophé. He has also received numerous commissions, notably from the Ensemble intercontemporain, Radio France, the IRCAM, and the Ensemble Contrechamps. He was awarded first prize in the Goffredo Petrassi international composition competition in 1989 for Epos and received the “Choc de la Musique“ from the Monde de la Musique in 2003 for the recording of his Animus Anima. He was also awarded a “Coup de Cœur“ by the the Académie Charles Cros in 2004 for the album Maya and the Amadeus prize for his album Mixtim in 2007. His opera Antigone (2006) won the Franco Abbiati Prize in 2007. In 2009, the Teatro alla Scala commissioned and performed his 33 Noms, based on a text by Marguerite Yourcenar. In 2016, he received the Prix Arthur Honegger from the Fondation de France for his whole oeuvre.

Fedele is an active and sought-after teacher, and has been a guest instructor at institutions including Harvard University, the University of Barcelona, the Sorbonne, the IRCAM, the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki, the Chopin Academy in Warsaw, the Centre Acanthes, Conservatoire de Lyon (CNSMDL), the Conservatoire de Strasbourg, and the conservatories of Milan, Bologna, and Turin. In 2020, the French Ministry of Culture named him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Lettres et des Arts. In 2005, he was named to the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia de Rome, where he was appointed as a professor of composition in 2007. He lives and works in Milan, teaching at the Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi, as well as at the Conservatoire de Strasbourg. From 2009 to 2011, he served as artistic director of the Orchestra i Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan. He was the director of the music department of the Venice Biennale from 2012-2016, and again from 2016 to 2019. From 2017 to 2020, he also served as artistic director of the Venice Biennale Musica.