Luca Luciano
Luca Luciano is a solo artist and a thinker, a clarinet virtuoso and a composer with a strong interest in philosophy, who has made his career in Great Britain, lived in London for more than twenty years and now lives between the UK and Italy.
Early life and education
Luciano was born in Naples, Italy. He began his career at the age of twelve performing at the Sala Curci of Naples. He received a master's degree from the Conservatory of Music of Salerno in 1999 and he is awarded the Fellow Status of the Higher Education Academy of Great Britain in 2010.Life and work
Luciano has defined himself as a solo artist, not solely an instrumentalist, but a complete musician in line with the tradition set by the great maestri of the past. He has held the position of clarinet professor at the Leeds College of Music in the UK, he is a specialist of both classical and improvised music and his research focuses on extended techniques, unconventional sound production, sound effects and new compositions for solo clarinet. Music to him is part of a broader philosophical path where creativity is an important element of his life with an ontological relevance to him. When it comes to his art, "Luciano seems intent on challenging preconceptions" and his interpretations are praised as "bold and unique".Introduced as "the new voice of the clarinet" by De Klarinet magazine, a keen promoter of new music, he has been described by Musician Magazine as "a noted Italian clarinettist and composer who now makes his home in London, having developed an enviable reputation as an instrumental virtuoso around the UK and overseas via recordings and concert hall appearances". Praised by the International Clarinet Association for "the full range of his abilities", Luciano was introduced by the BBc as "one of Europe's leading exponents of jazz clarinet".
He has "established himself as the friendly face of contemporary clarinet" according to the Clarinet & Saxophone Magazine. He has held several recitals, master-classes, lecture-recitals and workshops in the UK, Europe and South America including the South Bank Centre in London, the Barber Institute of Fine Arts, the Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, SESI Serie International and Centro Cultural São Paulo, European Clarinet Festival in Belgium, The American Cathedral in Paris. In recent years he has been focusing primarily on his own music with premieres regularly held at St Martin in the Fields in London for their "New Music Series", Cambridge University and overseas. His compositions have been cited on books about the clarinet repertoire.
His research on extended techniques, sound effects, unconventional sound production and their application on composed or improvised music started when he took up a position as a Lecturer at the Leeds College of Music and has carried on over the years resulting in the publication of his "Introductory Method to Extended Techniques" for clarinet which sums up the last fifteen years of his research.
Music style and aesthetics
As a composer, Luciano is not much interested in serialism. His eclectic approach to music-making is inspired by the great musical figures of the past with a strong will to be a complete musician. Besides what he calls "performance pieces" one can find several short compositions, highly condensed miniature pieces that range from more experimental and ground-breaking clarinet solo pieces informed by his research to more melodic music for clarinet and piano or other chamber ensembles. The influence of and his experience with popular music can be noticed, above all jazz music, resulting in a style that alternates music full of energy, sense of hunour and melancholy. He has also written music for rarely used combinations of instruments, like clarinet and guitar trio/quartet or music for clarinet, guitar and piano.In terms of aesthetics, post-modernism is a good way to define most of his work. The "ironic re-elaboration" of the styles of the past is evident in music that is often characterised by a peculiar sense of humour often using the form of the musical parody, most of all the "window form", where the artist "opens up" a new door to a different "world" as clearly evident on his two of his major works, Sequenza #1 and #2 and some of his compositions for clarinet and piano. For this reason one can find the use of music quotations from major composers or folkloric tunes, but also the creation of new folk tunes as intended by Bartok. The use of the "alea" is quite frequent in Luciano's music for he aims at making the poetic gesture and the reproduction of the composition coincide, making the piece unique every time it is performed. In his specific case, we find passages of "real-time" variations/permutations of an "incipit", impromptu cadenzas and passages that leave to performers the choice of the line or segment of the scoresthey have to play in a certain "time-field". This also explains the use of the basso continuo he makes on compositions for clarinet and piano, mainly on his sonatas in one movement in fact inspired by the "sonata a solo" of the barocco era.
In terms of harmonies, Luciano generally uses dissonant chords not connected to each other using the criteria of functional harmony. Instead, one finds chromatic chords, polytonality, clusters, passing notes ascending or descending chromatically and a peculiar use of quartal harmonies or mirror chords combined with edgy rhythms. In some cases, as in the Divertimento for Orchestra, we have a polyphony of independent lines with chromatic passages that create peculiar harmonies and dissonances. To him there is no need to emancipate dissonances, on the contrary, he wants dissonance and different shades of chromatic colours eventually releasing the tension on a more conventional chord. Some music is wholly chromatic, like Sonata #5 for clarinet and basso continuo.
It is really on the compositions for clarinet solo and clarinet ensemble where we find more experimental and ground-breaking material. Informed by his research on extended techniques, sound effects and unconventional sound production, we find lots of microtonal music where he draws in more pitches to the chromatic scale generally using them as grace notes or embellishments. Often Luciano exploits a small cell made of a few notes that he then varies, modulating them or transposing them or using the above-mentioned sound effects. On most pieces there is clearly a gravitational pull, that is a note that acts as an anchor around which the music gravitates.
Educational Publications
The “Introductory Method to Extended Techniques” for clarinet comes with an audio CD featuring clarinet solo music performed by Luciano himself, which is really a solo album in its own merit, still with a musical purpose to it and a strong creative drive.This publication sums up the last fifteen years of a research Luciano started long time ago when he took up a lecturing position in the UK. All these years of study, travels around the world, interchanges and, above all, plenty of experimentation and contemporary music practice, have led to this publication. The author aims at giving to other instrumentalists the possibility of learning unconventional techniques that are useful for the last century’s repertoire and today’s music, but also useful to those who want to approach this subject as part of their studies and/or research.
The method consists of three parts: during the first part, clarinettists will work on different techniques separately, one for each chapter, and each chapter will include little examples and exercises along with short Studies designed for that specific technique; the second part features ten Etudes where more than one technique is applied on its own or combined with another sound effect. The Appendix features Luciano’s compositions recently premiered at the prestigious St Martin in the Fields in London and Cambridge University or at other established concert series and, above all, included in the attached CD along with all the recordings of the short studies and of the Contemporary Etudes.
The author constantly encourages creativity and an active approach to studying the material presented in this publication with a strong incentive towards experimentation and diverging thinking.
Selected works
Clarinet Solo:- Fantasia for Demi-Clarinet
- Fantasia Microtonale
- Fragment #4
- Fragment #5
- Fragment #6
- Fragment #8
- Homage to Puccini
- Rondò Contemporaneo
- Sequenza #1 "Il Prescelto"
- Sequenza #2 in A minor "The Resurrection"
- Fragment #2
- Fragment #3
- Homage to Poulenc #2
- Sonata #2 "Stellare" per clarinetto e basso continuo
- Sonata #3, in one movement
- Sonata #5, per clarinetto e basso continuo
- Sonata #6 "Birth, life and death of Stravinsky", in one movement
- Sonata #8, in one movement
- DesafiNapoli. for Clarinet and Guitar Quartet
- Divertimento #3, "Londrina" for Clarinet Trio
- Divertimento #4, for Clarinet Quartet or for solo clarinet with tape/pre-recorded parts
- Divertimento #5, "Concertando com Tau" for Clarinet and Guitar Quartet
- Divertimento #6 "Guido", for Clarinet and String Quartet
- Divertimento #7, "Canone, cadenza e finale from a theme of Prokofiev's Lt. Kije" for Clarinet Quartet
- Divertimento #9 "The Damnation of the Dreamer", for solo clarinet with tape/pre-recorded parts
- Divertimento #11 for Clarinet Trio or also available for Duo Clarinet and Bass Clarinet
- Divertimento #12 "La Redentrice del Sognatore", for solo clarinet with tape/pre-recorded parts
- "Mosquito", for Clarinet and Tape
- Variations on "Rasga o Meu Coraçao", Homenagem a Villa-Lobos, for clarinet and guitar quartet
- Vocalizzo, for clarinet and guitar
- Divertimento "Mediterraneo", for two guitars
- Fragment #9, for guitar and piano
- Two Miniatures for guitar and piano, from the album Poeta
- Divertimento for Orchestra