Caterina Barbieri (it)

Caterina Barbieri (born in Bologna, 1990) is an Italian composer now based in Berlin.

She has composed music for old and new synthesizers as well as for string instruments. Her focus on minimalism in composition arises from a meditation on primary waveforms and exploration of the polyphonic and polyrhythmic potential of sequencers. By means of synthesis, pattern based operations and subtractive counterpoint, her music draws severe geometries in time and space. Her work explores themes of machine intelligence and object oriented perception in sound through approaching music practice as an integrative cognitive feedback between humans and technology. Repetition and pattern permutation as media to perceptual insight lie at the core of her current sonic research. Since 2013 she has researched and produced music at the renowned Elektronmusikstudion in Stockholm, where she has intensively composed for the Buchla 200 system. Her debut album Vertical, composed for Buchla 200 and vocals, was produced between Elektronmusikstudion and the Royal University of Music in Stockholm and released via Important Records’ Cassauna offshoot.

2017 sees her releasing the solo work Patterns of Consciousness on Important Records and the debut album of her collaborative project with Carlo Maria Punctum on Berlin’s imprint Summe (LP, May 2017).

She holds a diploma in classical guitar and a bachelor's degree in electro-acoustic music from the conservatory of Bologna, Italy with a thesis about 3D spatialisation and the perception of time, space and sound spectrum in vertical music. She also got a bachelor's degree in the Faculty of Humanities and Philosophy of Bologna with a thesis in Ethnomusicology about Hindustani music and minimalism. Since early 2016, she collaborates with the agency of the historical Berlin’s festival Atonal and works on projects involving theatre and multimedia productions. Her collaboration with Kali Malone Upper Glossa debuted at Berlin Atonal 2016 to massively positive critical acclaim, with The Wire picking out the performance as a festival highlight and describing it as “a trip deep within the mothership – hypnotic and beautifully disorientating”.

Barbieri's music "reveals the potential present in each singular tone - as well as the movement of a piece as a whole - to envelop the listener with little regard for linear time. Each sound is both a piece of a larger whole - an ever-fluctuating stream of techno-inflected minimalism - and a world unto itself, rich with texture and resonance that draws the listener in with a magnetic pull." (Adhoc Magazine)