Marko Ciciliani

Marko Ciciliani received his musical training as a composerand electronic musician in New York, Hamburg and The Hague. Already during his studies he has collected extensive experience not only in the fields of ?academic? composition, but also in free improvisation and with various pop-settings. He has written for a large variety of settings, including orchestra, ensembles, solo works and sound installations, often including live-electronics and other media like light, laser, video or cartoons.

Typical for Ciciliani's work is that it tries to combine seemingly contradictory materials, giving the composition a feeling of experiment and playfulness, with surprising turns and a variety of color. In his more recent work a special field of interest lies in the combination of sound and light and the exploration of the various interrelationships between the two, which was also the topic of his PhD research that he completed at Brunel University London in 2010. The different ?genres? in which Ciciliani's music can be heard and seen, are reflecting his manifold musical activities.

His music has been performed in more than 30 countries in Europe, Asia, Australia and the Americas. It has been programmed by festivals of electronic experimental music like Club Transmediale Berlin, Night of the Unexpected Amsterdam, the NowNow Series Sydney and SuperDeluxe/Tokyo just as much as by international festivals for chamber music like Wien Modern, Gaudeamus, Forum Neue Musik Deutschlandfunk, Zagreb Biennale, ISCM World Music Days and many more. Also his sound installations have been presented by Galleries and Museums in the Netherlands, Germany and the UK.

In 2006 Ciciliani founded the group Bakin Zub, an ensemble comprising five distinguished musicians from different backgrounds. Bakin Zub is dedicated to the performance of Ciciliani's music while placing an emphasis on the combination of instrumental writing, live-electronics and light designs. In April 2007 Bakin Zub premiered and toured the multimedia work ?My Ultradeep I? which received critical acclaim. In November 2008 the second evening-length project ?Jeanne of the Dark? ? composed in collaboration with Terre Thaemlitz ? was premiered at the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 2012 a new program-length work titled "Heterotopolis" will be premiered at the ZKM. "Heterotopolis is a collaboration with visual artist Marcel B?hler and a coproduction between the ZKM and Novembermusic.

As a performer Ciciliani has specialised for many years in the no-input mixer, a mixing board which does not use any external inputs, but where all sounds are created through internal feedbacks. As an improviser he has given concerts with Fred Frith, Gordon Mumma, Jaap Blonk, Axel D?rner and Sachiko M, amongst others. He has toured extensively with this instrument with different solo-repertoires.
Since 2009 he swapped the no-input mixer setup for a semimodular Cwejman synthsizer that he uses in combination with a computer controlled OSC-to-voltage converter.

As an interpreter of electronic parts Ciciliani works with leading orchestras and ensembles, like the Concertgebouw Orkest, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Philharmonia Orchestra London, SWR Orchestra, Musikfabrik and many others.

In 2009 Marko Ciciliani was recipient of the Villa Aurora Stipend, a three-month artists residency in Los Angeles. Also in 2009 he was artist-in-residence at the 14th composer's forum in Mittersil/Austria.

Marko Ciciliani is guest-professor for electroacoustic composition at the IEM of the Arts University in Graz. Also he is lecturer at the University for Music and Performing Arts in Vienna, the University of Applied Sciences in St. P?lten, and guest-lecturer at the Royal Conservatoire in The Hague.