Pierluigi Billone was born in Italy in 1960. He studied guitar, chamber music, and composition in Milan and in Siena, and was the student of Salvatore Sciarrino at the Città di Castello. He then traveled to Germany, where he lived from 1991 to 2000, devoting himself to composition; while living in Stuttgart, he studied with Helmut Lachenmann. He received numerous fellowships – Akademie Schloss Solitude, Fondation Heinrich Strobel, Hamburgische Staatsoper, Kunststiftung Baden/Wurttemberg – and multiple composition prizes – the Kompositionspreis from the city of Stuttgart in 1993, the Busoni-Kompositionspreis (Academy of Arts Berlin 1996), the Wiener Internationaler Kompositionspreis (Vienna 2004), the Ernst-Krenek-Preis (Vienna 2006), and the Kompositionspreis of the Ernst-von-Siemens-Musikstiftung (Munich 2010).

Following in the footsteps of his two main teachers, Sciarrino and Lachenmann, Billone focuses on the nature of sound. He draws additional inspiration from free jazz and non-European music for his research on sound matter. After returning to Italy briefly in 2000, he moved to Vienna. There, his music has been played by renowned performers, such as the Klangforum Wien. His compositions have been broadcast on German and Austrian radio, and are regularly featured in international festivals such as Donaueschingen – PA (2005), Phonogliphi (2011) – Witten – TA (2005) – and Wien Modern. Ars Musica Brussels and the Paris Festival d’Automne have also featured major productions of his work, notably the 2010 premiere of Kosmoi.Fragmente at the Festival d’Automne.

Billone was a guest professor of composition at the University of Graz, Austria from 2006-2008, and again from 2010-2012. He is a regularly invited teacher and lecturer (IEMA-Ensemble Modern Akademie, Frankfurt; Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris; Conservatorium Amsterdam; Musikuniversität Wien; Conservatorio della Svizzera italiana, Lugano; Harvard University; and Columbia University).

In his search for new instrumental techniques and an ever-broader palette of sonic possibilities, Billone plays the instruments for which he composes and works closely with performers, including Emilio Pomàrico, basoonist Lorelei Dowling, percussionists Christian Dierstein and Adam Weisman, violist Barbara Maurer, and vocalists Frank Wörner and Alda Caiello. He devotes a great deal of his work to low voice and instruments such as the double bass (UTU AN.KI LU, 1996), low voice (ME A AN, 1994), bass clarinette, (1+1=1 for two bass clarinets, 2006), and the bassoon, for which he wrote five solo pieces in 2003-2004 (the Legno. Edre cycle) and the more recent Blaues Fragment (2010), as well as ensemble pieces such as Legno.Stele (2004), with two solo bassoons, or Phonogliphi (2011). He pushes to the furthest reaches of the possible with his research, particularly in the pieces he has written for extremely simple instruments such as the spring drum – Mani.Mono, 2007) - or glass and automobile springs - Mani.De Leonardis (2004) - or dobachi (Japanese temple bells) - Mani.Gonxha (2011). This last piece is part of a series titled Mani…, wherein the hand is an extension and even a part of the instrument itself: Mani.Giacometti for string trio (2000), Mani.Long, a commission from the Klangforum Wien for ensemble (2001), Mani.Matta (2008), and Mani.Δίκη (2011) for percussion.