As a composer, pianist, and musical saw / Vietnamese dan bau soloists, Luciano Chessa has been active in Europe, the U.S., and Australia. Among his compositions, it is worth mentioning a piano and percussion duet after Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Petrolio, written for Sarah Cahill and Chris Froh and presented in 2004 at the American Academy in Rome, Il pedone dell’aria for orchestra and double children choir, premiered in 2006 at the Auditorium of Turin's Lingotto and subsequently released on DVD, Louganis (San Francisco, Old First Concerts, 2007), for piano and TV/VCR combo, Inkless Imagination IV (UC Davis, Mondavi Center, 2008) for viola, mini-bass musical saw, turntables, percussion, FM radios, blimp and video projection (both works in collaboration with artist Terry Berlier), Recitativo, aria e coro della Vergine (Concert Hall of the San Francisco Conservatory, 2008), and Strelitzie, a newly published work for amplified baritone and string orchestra.

His next composition projects include Ragazzi incoscienti scarabocchiano sulla porta di un negozio fallito AN.1902, a large orchestral work commissioned by the Orchestra Filarmonica di Torino, Italy, and the completion and staging of an oratorio titled Urlo impietrato. The San Francisco-based label Strawberry Hill Records has recently released three new recordings as part of a collection of eleven issues of his music: Tom’s Heart for two-pianos-one player and video by Terry Berlier (DVD), Tryptique pour Gérard for quartet (CD), and Money is Money and Time is Time for Vietnamese dan bau (CD), which includes two pieces written in collaboration with LA-based singer Christine Morse. In 2009 he has been touring extensively (New York, Sydney, Melbourne, Hamburg, Milan, Rome, etc).

Furthermore, Chessa has been performing Futurist sound poetry for well over 10 years. His reading of Italian poetry to accompany a performance of the Grammy Award Nominated New Century Chamber Orchestra in San Francisco’s Herbst Theatre in 2000 was granted with excellent reviews in the San Francisco press, and a recording of Francesco Cangiullo’s explosive Futurist sound poem Piedigrotta, of which he gave the modern world premiere, is forthcoming on Strawberry Hill Records.

His research on Italian Futurism, which he has presented and published internationally, has shown for the first time the occult relationship between Luigi Russolo’s intonarumori and Leonardo da Vinci’s musical machines. He is currently working on Luigi Russolo Futurista. Noise, Visual Arts, and the Occult the first monograph dedicated to Russolo and his Art of Noises, to be published by the University of California Press in Spring 2010.

Chessa’s Futurist expertise has resulted in an invitation by RoseLee Goldberg, General Director of the prestigious New York-based Biennale of the Arts PERFORMA to supervise the first complete reconstruction project of Russolo’s intonarumori, and to curate concerts of music specifically commissioned for this ensemble. Based on the original patents, which his UC Press book will make entirely available for the first time to English audiences, the constructing project will be completed in collaboration with professional instrument builder Keith Cary and a team of technicians from EMPAC. The new intonarumori ensemble will be unveiled in November 2009 during PERFORMA 09 with a series of concerts featuring an impressive array of world premieres written by the who’s who of contemporary experimental and noise music. The concerts, due to tour extensively, will also include Chessa’s brand new L’acoustique ivresse for intonarumori ensemble and sound poetry.

Chessa taught and lectured at St. John’s College of Oxford, Columbia University, Sydney’s and Melbourne’s Conservatories and Universities, the Conservatory of Music in Bologna, UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, EMPAC (RPI), among others. He has been interviewed by the CBS (KPIX/KBHK) television channel and by the British BBC as Luigi Russolo’s foremost scholar. He currently teaches at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, and collaborates with SF’s Italian Cultural Institute. His music is published by RAI TRADE, the Italian National Broadcast Channels’ music publishing company.