The double opening of the 41st edition of the Romaeuropa Festival features one of the most significant figures on the contemporary Italian music scene. Caterina Barbieri returns to REF with a new collaboration with ONCEIM – Orchestre de la Création, de l’Expérimentation et de l’Improvisation Musicale.
Commissioned by the Philharmonie de Paris, she presents the Italian premiere of Bruma and Non puoi contare l’infinito, a new composition for orchestra, electronics, and voices, followed by a concert of unreleased solo works featuring some ONCEIM musicians on vocals and brass.
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 within the time of live performance.
Led by Frédéric Blondy, ONCEIM – an orchestra of more than thirty musicians coming from diverse musical backgrounds – opens the evening with Constellation by Christian Marclay, Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale: an open, visual score in which each performance emerges from listening and collective 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.
