BIOGRAPHY
"Spagnolo’s music both stimulates and satisfies the ear, at once modern, eerie and undeniably beautiful"
- Charlotte Valori, ***** Operissima Whispers
"a notable success that will repay repeated listening and deserve further outing"
- Tim Hochstrasser, **** Plays to See
"the layers of orchestration are at times really moving"
- Eleanor MacFarlane, ***** The Upcoming
"Imaginative Scoring"
- Yeruda Saphiro, **** The Stage
"a confident approach to the tricky task of structuring an hour-long work for a solo singer, as well as creating a striking and remarkably evocative score"
- Planet Hugill, on Faust, Alberta
"an outstanding composer and skilled orchestrator that has a full command of the symphony orchestra"
- David Benoit, composer and AASO conductor
"lush and flowing music, with edges both of wildness and of formalism"
- audiece reivew, Tasting Rhubarb
Awards
Recognition for Outstanding Contribution and Dedication to Music Pedagogy and Performance in presenting Grand Prize Winner
at International Youth Music Competitions
2022 - Atlanta, USA
Star Award, London College of Music: nomination for Lecturer of the Year
2019 - London, UK
Made a Difference Award, ARU: nomination for Outstanding Tutor
2018 - Cambridge, UK
ARU Arts Council: award for new music-theatre production
2017 - Cambridge, UK
Hinrichsen Foundation: award for new opera production
2014 - London, UK
Recital Music Composition Competition: Highly Commended with Honours
2011 - Templecombe, Somerset UK
Artist-in-Residence at USF Verftet
February/March 2011 - Bergen, Norway
Philip Bates Composition Prize: First Prize
2009 - Birmingham, UK
Asia America Symphony Orchestra Prize: First Prize
2009 - Los Angeles, USA
Nomination for 'Limelight Films and Arts Award'
2009 - London, UK
Il Circolo Association Award
2009 - London, UK
David Turton Prize for Music Composition: Winner
2008 - Middlesex University, London, UK
Asia America Symphony Orchestra Prize: Second Prize
2008 - Los Angeles USA
Composer-in-Residence at Anteros Art Centre
2008 - Norwich, UK
Asia America Symphony Orchestra Prize: First Prize from outside US
2006 - Los Angeles, USA
Emanuele Gianturco National Jazz Prize: First Prize
2001 - Potenza, Italy
Simone Spagnolo is a composer, lecturer and academic whose work embraces a wide range of artistic and scholarly activities.
His work is often driven by a profound curiosity for interdisciplinary interactions, within which musical composition interplays and amalgamates with other disciplines, as for instance narrative, theatre, drawing, philosophy, design, detecting, and performance art. His compositional style tends to manifests through music-theatre, musical-actions, instrumental theatre, graphic scores, experimental opera, and other hybrid forms that often feature unusual instrumental and vocal combinations. His portfolio includes numerous chamber-scale music-theatre spectacles that have received starred reviews, as for instance Even you, lights, cannot hear me for two singers doubling on piano and pebbles, and Faust, Alberta, an operatic monologue for baritone and four instruments.
Spagnolo’s music has been performed in internationally known venues and festivals such as London’s Royal Festival Hall, St.Martin-in-the-Fields, Blackheath Halls, Riverside Studios, Tete-a-Tete Festival, Old Royal Naval College’s Chapel, Italian Cultural Institute London, Cambridge Mumford Theatre, Birmingham Symphony Hall, Stanford University, Los Angeles’ Aratani Theatre, Brno’s Janacek Academy, Budapest’s Liszt Academy, Chongqing University, Hong Kong’s Yuen Long Theatre, Centro de Estudios Públicos in Santiago de Chile, Padua’s Sala dei Giganti, Spoleto’s Casa Menotti, Bolzano Contemporary Music Festival, Salerno’s Dome, Campania Eco Festival, and Pennsylvania’s Great Lakes Film Festival, among others.
Having composed music for a variety of settings and contexts – from live concerts to theatre and ballet, from soundtracks to library music – Simone Spagnolo has been commissioned from institutions and companies such as Opera in the City Festival, Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance, Anderson Entertainment, Fabergé LTD, Intervox Music Production, ChinaWest Productions, Lost Picture Production, Dance Ahead, and St. Augustine Singers.
Artists he has collaborated with include musicians Gabriele Baldocci, Timothy Schwarz and Alda Dizdari, conductors Diego Garcia Rodriguez and Paul Jackson, singers Kate Symonds-Joy and Ben Bevan, ensembles Mifune Tsuji Trio and Arioso Furioso, playwrights Roberto Cavosi and Giordano Trischitta, directors Luc Mollinger and Ben Samuels, among others.
Spagnolo has also collaborated with numerous harpists, developing a rich repertoire of works for harp and harp ensembles which have been performed internationally by numerous musicians. His composition Silenzio, for prepared harp has been performed globally in tens of concerts. It was featured in a dedicated documentary broadcast on Cultural Plaza, Jade Channel TVB, Hong Kong (2018), it is regularly performed as part of conservatoire’s recitals and exams, and it is featured in the Trinity College London’s Syllabus.
Simone Spagnolo has received numerous awards, including the Asia America Symphony Orchestra Composition Prize, in Los Angeles, earning the distinction of being the first winner from outside the United States; an award he received from legendary pianist and producer David Benoit. Other prizes he received include Birmingham Conservatoire’s Philip Bates Prize and Middlesex University’ David Turton Prize. In 2011 he has been appointed as artist-in-residence at Bergen’s USF Verftet, Norway.
Since 2018 he has been Head of Composition at London College of Music, University of West London, where he leads the BMus and MMus composition curricula, as well as numerous knowledge exchange activities including the LCM Composition Festival and the Composers Workshops. Previously, he held the position of Senior Lecturer and Course Leader for Performing Arts at Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge, and Lecturer in Music Theatre at University of Cumbria. He has also lectured on creative orchestration for the Conservatoire of Rovigo’s Master in Film Music Composition (Italy).
His academic writings have been published on Studies in Musical Theatre Journal (Intellect Books), Studies in Theatre and Performance, and the Institute of Composing Journal, and he has delivered conference papers at University of Oxford’s APGRD, Oxford Brookes University’s OBERTO, London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, and Cambridge’s Anglia Ruskin University, among others.
Some of his music scores are published by Universal Edition.
Simone Spagnolo’s discography can be found on Spotify, iTunes, and all the main music distributors.