Luc Ferrari was born in France in 1929. He began his musical studies at the Conservatoire de Versailles (1946-1948), and then entered the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, where he studied piano and composition with Alfred Cortot and Arthur Honegger (1948-1950). He also attended the analysis course of Olivier Messiaen at the Conservatoire de Paris (1953-1954). In 1956, he joined the Groupe de musique concrète, where he remained until 1966. During this period he worked with Pierre Schaeffer to create the Groupe de Recherche Musicale (1958). He headed the research group and oversaw its teaching activities while coordinating a series of broadcasts on musique concrète (1959-1960). He worked as a researcher in the field of new instruments, and the study of instruments and sound objects (1960-1961). During the same period, he took over as artistic director of the Ensemble International de Musique Contemporaine de Paris (EIMCP), conducted by Constantin Simonovitch, exploring schematic improvisation (1961-1962). He also oversaw a collective composition for tape and orchestra that involved all of the GRM’s composers, as well as a series of television broadcasts titled Chaque pays fête son grand homme, for which he served as co-director and worked on the sound recording and the musical illustration (1962-1965). In October 1965, he traveled to Germany for six months to teach at the Rheinische Musikschule in Cologne. The following year (1965-1966), he collaborated with author and director Gérard Patris on a series of French television broadcasts on contemporary music titled Les Grandes Répétitions (featuring Olivier Messiaen, Edgard Varèse, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Hermann Scherchen, and Cecil Taylor). In 1966, he left the Groupe de Recherche Musicale for a year-long post teaching experimental music in Stockholm. The following year, he traveled to Berlin on a fellowship from the Ford Foundation and DAAD. Between 1968 and 1969, he was the musical director of the Maison de la Culture in Amiens. In 1972, he founded Studio Billig, his own electroacoustic workspace, and was awarded the Karl Sczuka Prize for the radio drama Portrait-Spiel (a production of Südwestfunk, Baden-Baden). He taught composition at the Conservatoire de Pantin (1978-1980). In 1982, with the support of Maurice Fleuret, he founded La Muse en Circuit, a studio for electroacoustic composition and radio art. Between 1985 and 1986, with La Muse en Circuit, he organized a series of performances at the Café de la Danse in Paris, titled Vue imprenable sur l’acoustique. These included Sombres machines à sons, Radio sur scène, and La Leçon d’espagnol. Most of these performances were recorded by France Culture’s musical broadcasting program. In 1987, he was awarded the Prix Italia for his symphonic tale Et si tout entière maintenant, which was created as part of the multimedia project Brise-Glace. He was awarded the Karl Sczuka Prize again in 1988 for the radio drama Je me suis perdu ou Labyrinthe portrait (a coproduction of Südwestfunk and La Muse en Circuit). A major retrospective of his work was organized for the Festival des Manca in Nice in 1989. That same year, he was awarded the Grand Prix National by the French Ministry of Culture. In 1990, he was awarded the Serge and Olga Koussevitzky International Recording Award for the symphonic work Histoire du plaisir et de la désolation. In 1991, he was awarded another Prix Italia (Special Prize of the R.A.I.) for his radiophonic creation L’escalier des aveugles, co-produced by the Radio nacional de España and La Muse en Circuit. In 1993, he was a guest of the WDR electronic music studio in Cologne. On 21 avril 1994, he stepped down from his position as president of La Muse en Circuit. Parcours confus, a retrospective of his work, was organized in Groningen in October 1995, followed by a concert tour in the Netherlands. In October 1996, Ferrari built his own studio, which he called Post-Billig. In October 1997, with support from the French Foreign Ministry, he was invited on a three-week tour of concerts and lectures in California’s major universities. In 1999, he began work on a series of compositions titled “Exploitation des concepts,“ working on installations and improvising with young experimental DJs. Several pieces grew from these collaborations. In 2001, a retrospective of his work was organized by the Futura Festival, including a performance of all of his electroacoustic compositions. In 2002, the New Generation group invited to him a “monographic” festival in Japan. In 2003, a series of concerts was organized at La Friche de la Belle de Mai in Marseille, as well as a retrospective at the Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland. That year also included a concert tour in Japan, including stops in Tokyo, Nagoya, Osaka. In 2004, he was invited for a residency in Poitiers with the Ars Nova ensemble, during which he gave several concerts. In October of that year, he was invited to Lille 2004 (“8 days of Luc Ferrari’s music”) and to Courtrai for the Festival Audioframes. The following month, he was a guest of the Festival Novelum in Toulouse as well as of the GMEA-CNCM in Albi.

On 22 August 2005, Luc Ferrari died in Arezzo, in Tuscany.

He was awarded a posthumous Grand Prix Charles Cros for the release of his albums Les Anecdotiques – Exploitation des Concepts N° 6 and Archives sauvées des eaux – Exploitation des Concepts N° 1.