Rocco Di Pietro

Rocco Di Pietro was born in Buffalo, New York in 1949. He
studied composition and piano with Hans Hagen and Lukas
Foss in Buffalo and at the Berkshire Music Center, Tanglewood.
He studied in New York and Darmstadt with Bruno Maderna
and was a freelance composer for twenty years before earning
degrees from SUNY Buffalo and Vermont College.He became
an interdisciplinary adjunct professor teaching in prisons and
on many college campuses throughout New York, Ohio, and
California. He toured California prisons as artist-in-residence
and conducted four years of interviews in Chicago with Pierre
Boulez. The resulting book, DIALOGUES WITH BOULEZ, was
recently published by Scarecrow Press. He composed Prison
Dirges I for the Kronos String Quartet.
Di Pietro's music has been performed by many musicians in
venues throughout the world. These include: Christiane Edinger,
Christobal Halffter, Lukas Foss, Julius Eastman, Bruno Maderna,
Frances Marie Uitti, Yvar Mikhasoff, Jan Williams, Anthony
Miranda, Gunther Schuller, Dennis Russell Davies, the Buffalo
Philharmonic Chamber Orchestra, The Brooklyn Philharmonic, the
Bavarian Radio Orchestra, Pro Musica Chamber Orchestra, CETA
Orchestra, Ojai Ensemble Sonor, St. Paul Chamber Orchestra,
Columbus Wind Orchestra, Earlham String Orchestra, the Avant
Collective, and the Madd Lab Orchestra. Venues include: The
Kitchen, La Mama, Bang On A Can Festival, in New York,
Contemporary Music Society of Seoul, South Korea and American
Academy in Rome among others. Recent performances of LOST
have been featured at Dartmouth College and Stanford University.
Recently, his work has developed on several fronts. Sound
text radio works have developed simultaneously with his teaching
at Columbus State College of electronic music and other courses
in the Humanities. These works have been broadcast on radio
stations in Seattle, Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit, New York and in
Europe, in Naples, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Budapest etc.
He was composer in residence at Stanford University in 2009,and then traveled to Italy. He completed new works in 2010,with the premiere of the "Rajas for John Cage" at the Flea theatre in New York.