Ludovico Einaudi

Italian pianist and composer Ludovico Einaudi is recognized worldwide for his classically inspired pieces and contributions to film music. Born in Turin on November 23, 1955, he began playing the piano as a child with his mother, and went on to study at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan, where he attended the orchestration class of composer Luciano Berio. After graduating in 1982, he completed his training at the Tanglewood Music Festival Center (Massachusetts), before devoting himself to composition. Institutions such as La Scala in Milan and Lincoln Center in New York commissioned his multimedia works, including Time Out (1988), The Wild Man (1990), Emperor (1991) and Salgari (Per terra et per mare) (1995). Alongside his frequent film collaborations, Ludovico Einaudi began recording his own albums Stanze (1992), Le Onde (1996), Eden Roc with Armenian duduk player Djavan Gasparyan (1999) and I Giorni (2001). Nominated for an Oscar for the soundtrack to the film Fuori del Mondo (2000), he won an Echo Klassik, followed by an Italian Music Award for the soundtrack to Luce dei miei occhi (2002). In 2003, he produced the album Diario Mali with kora player Ballaké Sissoko. His subsequent recordings saw him alternate between compositions for solo piano, such as Una Mattina (2004), and orchestral scores, notably Divenire (2007) with the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra. Featuring electronic instrumentation, the projects Nightbook (2009) and In a Time Lapse (2013) are separated by a band experiment with brothers Robert and Ronald Lippok (To Rococo Rot), whose album Cloudland (2009) is credited to Whitetree. While his essentially minimalist melodies are acclaimed and featured in numerous films and commercials, Ludovico Einaudi diversifies his palette with the albums Taranta Project (2015), Elements (2019) and Seven Days Walking (2019), made up of seven chamber music suites. In 2020, confinement due to the Covid-19 pandemic forces him to produce the intimate album 12 Songs from Home. The compilation Cinema, released the following year, includes themes composed for the films The Father and Nomadland. Ludovico Einaudi has been awarded the medal of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic (2005), the Vittorio de Sica Prize (2013) and the title of Commandeur de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2013).