LUIGI ZANINELLI

The music of Luigi Zaninelli is known to performers and audiences around the world for work that excites the senses and stimulates the mind. He has become known as a composer of great craft and powerful emotional statement. 

 

Mr. Zaninelli was born in Raritan, New Jersey in 1932. At the age of 17, he played his music for renowned composer Gian Carlo Menotti who then accepted him as a student at the Curtis Institute of Music. Two years later the Curtis Institute sent Mr. Zaninelli to study composition with the legendary Rosario Scalero, the teacher of Menotti and Samuel Barber. Upon graduation, he joined the faculty of the Curtis Institute.

 

Zaninelli returned to Rome, Italy in 1964 to compose film music for RCA Victor Italiana. In 1968, he was appointed Composer-in-Residence at the University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Returning to the United States in 1973, he became Composer-in-Residence and Professor of Music at the University of Southern Mississippi.

Mr. Zaninelli's honors include a Steinway Prize and numerous ASCAP awards. He is a five-time recipient of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Music Award. With over 300 published works to his credit, he has received commissions to compose for virtually all mediums including opera, ballet, chamber music, orchestra, band, chorus, and solo voice. He has created several movie and television scores, including the major Italian motion picture, Una moglie Americana (An American Wife), and PBS documentaries, The Islander and The Last Confederates. His opera Snow-White recently received its European premier at the world famous Teatro del Maggio Musicale in Florence, Italy, where it was received with enthusiastic acclaim. As his music evolves, Zaninelli continues to find an ever-enlarging audience for his work.