Winners of the prestigious Paris institute’s selection process.
[Parts of the main article are cropped, including passages at column boundaries and the end of the interview. All readable text belonging to the interview and the adjacent notice on Baboni Schilingi is translated below.]
IRCAM, the Institute for Research and Coordination in Acoustics/Music, [part of the introduction is missing] works in education, concert production and scientific research. Within its educational section, each year a reading committee selects a number of composers from scores submitted worldwide, without nationality or age restrictions. They are then invited to work at IRCAM. Jacopo Baboni Schilingi and Giovanni Verrando are the only Italians selected this year for the next annual course.
Verrando: Exactly. The competition has four parts: three commissions for Ensemble InterContemporain, three for projects to be realised at IRCAM with its equipment, ten places on the annual course and ten on the summer course, which lasts a few weeks.
Baboni Schilingi: When sending a score, the composer specifies which category to enter.
You chose the annual course. How is it organised?
Verrando: The course itself lasts nine months, with lessons ranging from composition to psychoacoustics. Another three months are devoted to an artistic project, using IRCAM’s equipment, to be performed at IRCAM the following year. Essentially, each person puts what they have learned into practice in their own way.
Baboni Schilingi: Working at IRCAM allows us to discover and use cutting-edge equipment, machines such as NeXT, enabling real-time or highly sophisticated sound processing. Such equipment can be found only at IRCAM. Most studios mainly have commercial equipment, often released after being tested and developed at IRCAM, whereas the newest things are found here.
Verrando: There are two positive aspects. First, as Baboni Schilingi said, exposure to extremely advanced technologies. And…
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Baboni Schilingi: …from an artistic standpoint, other centres and academies have a great deal to offer too, but here there is also constant comparison with scientific results.
Verrando: Yes, there is a kind of leap.
Baboni Schilingi: Exactly, a leap. And then there are guarantees of artistic quality.
Verrando: It is no coincidence that, among those…
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Baboni Schilingi — neighbouring notice
For the Incontri Concerto initiative, part of Nuovi Spazi Musicali within the 1993 Romaeuropa international contemporary music festival, Romaeuropa’s chamber music artistic director Ada Gentile has invited young composer Jacopo Baboni Schilingi, a pupil of Ivan Fedele.
He will present three Improvvisi for solo piano and a new piece written for the event, performed by Viviana Amodeo. The initiative also asks young composers to outline the general characteristics of their works. Baboni Schilingi will participate in the opening Incontri Concerto on 7 July 1993 at Palazzo Falconieri, Rome.