Caterina Barbieri new director of Biennale Music Venice
Caterina Barbieri new Director of Biennale Music Venice. This is exactly the latest news at the moment.
The Venice Biennale, one of the most important cultural institutions in the world, has appointed Caterina Barbieri as the new Music Director. This is for 2025-2026. She will bring her own take on electronic and experimental music to Biennale Musica. The Board of Directors of La Biennale, chaired by Pietrangelo Buttafuoco, has given the green light to this great news for music lovers everywhere.
Read Caterina Barbieri’s vision as the new Director of Biennale Music Venice and find out what’s next.
Caterina Barbieri new director of Biennale Music Venice: What’s up?
Barbieri’s appointment is not just a mere succession; it’s a statement of intent for the Biennale towards the future of music. As Pietrangelo Buttafuoco said, Barbieri’s classical background and electronic music attitude is a “living bridge” between periods and styles. Her work expands the classical soundscapes and connects with the contemporary electronic elements, the physical and the metaphysical. This is something that Venice has always been about, a city that combines tradition and innovation.
Barbieri’s music doesn’t belong to genres but to the effects of sound on perception. Her pieces are often described as a “mind-altering journey” and she treats music as a deeply sensory, even metaphysical experience. She uses modular synthesizers to create complex soundscapes that hit the listener on a deep level. This is in line with the Biennale’s goal of artistic research and transgression in the arts.
Artistic director Caterina Barbieri for Biennale Music Venice
For Barbieri the Biennale Musica is an opportunity to bring more of the world into Venice’s music. Her work encompasses her interests in technology, tradition and perception in music and she will use these elements to create a music festival that will be as intellectual as it is sonic. Her appointment as Artistic Director confirms her forward thinking artistic approach, based on research and collaboration.
Barbieri has performed at the world’s most important music festivals and in top venues such as the Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, Haus der Kunst and the Venice Biennale itself. Her career highlights include releases on Editions Mego, collaborations with visual artist Ruben Spini and critically acclaimed albums such as Ecstatic Computation (2019) and Spirit Exit (2022). With each project she challenges the musical structures and explores memory, altered consciousness.
The Biennale has a tradition of appointing visionary directors and Barbieri is no exception. Known for her thoughtful, psychedelic soundscapes she brings an intellectual level to Biennale Musica. Her direction will make the audience see music not just as an audio experience but as a living organism that evolves with each performance, like Venice itself, with its layers of history and transformation.
Biennale Musica Venice: who is Caterina Barbieri?
Born in Bologna and based in Berlin, Barbieri studied classical guitar at the Conservatorio G.B. Martini and then electroacoustic composition. Her career developed through her fusion of classical training and sound technology. This background plus her studies in ethnomusicology has given her a deep understanding of music’s ability to cross cultural and temporal boundaries. Her work is known for its minimalism, complexity and the blend of past and future music.
Barbieri’s music is very personal. Her pieces are based on her philosophical thoughts on music and memory. This theme emerged with her breakthrough album Patterns of Consciousness where she used modular synthesis to explore the concept of musical time and its impact on consciousness. The album was widely acclaimed and established her as a leading figure in electronic music.
Her subsequent works, including Spirit Exit, only confirmed her reputation. This album, released on her own label “light-years”, is praised for its composition and its sonic immersion. Spirit Exit is a perfect blend of her compositional skills and philosophical depth, generative computation and acoustic warmth.
Caterina Barbieri new director of Biennale Music Venice: the vision
As Biennale Musica director Barbieri wants to programme that honours the Biennale’s history and uses the most innovative technologies. She has already worked on many projects that combine music, visual art and spatial design. Her live performances are often multisensory experiences, combining light and sound to go beyond the audio experience. That’s why she’s the perfect person to lead Biennale’s Music Department into a new era.
Her recent work includes a soundtrack for the film John and the Hole by Pascual Sisto and collaborations with artist Kali Malone on sound and environmental installations. Barbieri’s artistic approach goes beyond music as she sees each project as an opportunity to explore the relationships between music, space and perception. As she starts her role Barbieri’s programme will connect different sonic planets and offer the audience a unique musical experience in Venice.
Barbieri’s approach also matches Venice. The city has been a source of inspiration for her with its reflective waters, ethereal beauty and sense of constant transformation. As she says “Venice’s echoes and silences, its liminality and its timelessness are already music”. She will capture and amplify this quality and bring it to the forefront of Biennale Musica.
New sound and performance
As new artistic director of Biennale Musica Caterina Barbieri marks a new era of collaboration and creative process at La Biennale. Known for her use of modular synthesizers Barbieri uses sound as a medium to alter perception, her works are a “mind-altering journey”. Her vision combines classical training with the most innovative technologies, genres cross over to reimagine the future of music. She has worked at major music festivals like Primavera Sound and at top venues like Centre Pompidou and Haus der Kunst.
Her album Ecstatic Computation showed the psychedelic side of electronic music, Spirit Exit her compositional skills and music as a living being. Collaborating with visual artist Ruben Spini her live performances are multisensory and leave a lasting impression. With her project Womb developed with IRCAM’s multichannel system she has expanded the possibilities of sound, she’s the perfect director to redefine Biennale Musica.
Caterina Barbieri new director of Biennale Music Venice: conclusion
With Caterina Barbieri as new director of Biennale Music Venice the music department of the Venice Biennale is about to take a new path that combines classical training with the avant-garde. Her ability to balance album format works with live performance as a living bridge between sound and audience will be a Biennale Musica to remember.