The double inauguration of the forty-first edition of Romaeuropa Festival features one of the most relevant figures in contemporary Italian music. Caterina Barbieri returns to REF with a new collaboration with ONCEIM – Orchestra for the Creation, Experimentation and Improvisation of Music. Commissioned by the Philharmonie de Paris, she presents the Italian premiere of Non puoi contare l’infinito, a new composition for orchestra, electronics and voices, followed by a solo concert of unreleased pieces featuring some ONCEIM musicians on voices and brass.
The composition is structured in two acts: Bruma, for orchestra, three voices and electronics, and the concluding Non puoi contare l’infinito, for strings, brass and voice, from which the work takes its title.
Artistic director of the Venice Biennale Musica and one of the most internationally acclaimed Italian composers, Barbieri explores states of trance and altered consciousness through her music, moving between theoretical rigor and emotional intensity. Her compositions take shape as living organisms, transforming throughout the course of live performance.
Led by Frédéric Blondy, ONCEIM – an orchestra of over thirty musicians from diverse musical backgrounds – opens the evening with Constellation by Christian Marclay, Golden Lion winner at the Venice Biennale: a visual and open score in which each performance emerges from collective listening and improvisation.
From the breakthrough album Patterns of Consciousness (2017), Italian composer Caterina Barbieri explores, through modular synthesis and expanded electro-acoustic forms, the physical and metaphysical effects of sound on the listener. Described by Pitchfork as “a mind-altering journey” and “a dream machine for the ears,” her music investigates the creative potential of computation and generative techniques, addressing themes of memory, time, and perception, often traversing states of trance and altered consciousness. Her recordings—from Ecstatic Computation (2019) to Spirit Exit (2022) and Myuthafoo (2023)—have received widespread international acclaim for their ability to combine conceptual rigor, emotional intensity, and radical sonic vision. At the core of her practice lies live performance, understood as a compositional process: an ever-evolving organism often developed in dialogue with light and video to create immersive multisensory experiences. In recent years she has performed at major international festivals and institutions and founded the label light-years, dedicated to deep listening and music as a transformative force. Recently appointed Artistic Director of the Venice Biennale Musica, she continues to move between concerts, sound installations, and large-scale projects.
ONCEIM – Orchestra for the Creation, Experimentation and Musical Improvisation is an ensemble of thirty-five highly skilled musicians coming from diverse backgrounds: improvised music, jazz and free jazz, classical and contemporary music, and experimental and contemporary practices. Beyond its orchestral formation, ONCEIM is also an open collective that includes smaller ensembles and satellite projects developed by its own musicians. Founded in 2011 by Frédéric Blondy, ONCEIM was created as a space for contemporary sonic research, aiming to overcome the limits of traditional orchestral structures and conventional musical writing. Sound is understood as a living, organic material, collectively shaped, in which the individuality of each performer contributes to an unpredictable and shared outcome. In recent years, the orchestra has performed at major international institutions and festivals and, after a long residency in Paris, has since 2020 embarked on a nomadic path, continuing to explore new contexts and territories of contemporary music.
