COSIMO CAROVANI
"music is made for talking
to the hearts of men, and I want
get there, if I can. "
(Luigi Boccherini)
Florentine by birth, Cosimo Carovani is a soloist, chamber musician, composer, and writer.
An energetic and exuberant voice of the Italian cello, he is considered a musician of great versatility and culture, endowed with freshness and depth, and one of the most lively voices of his generation.
Being a chamber musician by vocation, he won the first prize and two additional awards with the Indaco Quartet (finalist at the International Paolo Borciani Competition 2017, Manhattan Competition 2022, Golden Medal) at the Osaka Chamber Music Competition. He has performed for broadcasters such as Radio Tre Piazza Verdi, Rai 5, or NDR in Hannover, and has participated in various festivals as a chamber musician and soloist, such as Heidelberger Frühlings, Festival del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, NDR Musikwochen, International MusikFest Goslar, Grunelius Concert in Frankfurt, Società del Quartetto di Milano, Festival "Paesaggi Toscani", Festival Anima Mundi, Palazzo Marino in Musica, Società dei concerti di Milano Festival Musica nei Chiostri, Quatuor in Bordeaux, Festival Trame Sonore, Stradivari Festival in Cremona, Società Filarmonica di Trento, and many others.
He is a recipient of scholarships, including the prestigious DAAD Prize or Live Music Now Stipendium, Börsen Club Hannover, Giuseppe Scotese Prize, Jeunesse Musical, and the Morosini Fund cultural prize.
He graduated with top marks from the "Luigi Cherubini" Conservatory in Florence under the guidance of Andrea Nannoni, while simultaneously attending courses at the Fiesole Music School with Filippo Burchietti. He later perfected his skills with Enrico Bronzi in Portogruaro, with masters Giovanni Gnocchi and Stefano Cerrato at the "Incontri col Maestro" Academy in Imola, and in 2018 with Enrico Dindo at the Pavia Cello Academy. He holds a Bachelor K.A. degree from the Hochschule für Musik, Theater und Media in Hannover, under the guidance of Tilmann Wick.
He participated in the summer sessions of the European Chamber Music Academy (ECMA) and attended advanced courses for string quartet at the Fiesole Music School, the Accademia Chigiana in Siena, and at the Musikhochschule in Hannover.
He is the principal cellist at the "Milano Classica" Chamber Orchestra and has collaborated with orchestras such as O.R.T. (principal cello), "Leonore" Orchestra of Pistoia (principal cello), Colibrì Ensemble (principal cello), Uni.Mi. Orchestra (principal cello), OFT of Turin (principal cello).
He actively collaborates with internationally renowned artists such as Avi Avital, Uri Caine, Michele Campanella, Derek Bermel, Claudia Barainsky, Julian Bliss, Christian Löffler, Francesco Dillon, Giovanni Bietti, Franziska Pietsch, and many others.
He has also studied contemporary orchestration, composition, and video writing with Andrea Portera. Winner of several competitions, his catalog, despite his young age, already includes more than seventy opus numbers and he publishes with the Sconfinarte house in Milan: his compositions have been performed at the Teatro alla Pergola, at the Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, at Lo Squero di Venezia, at the festival Paesaggi Musicali Toscani, Agimus in Florence, Festival le Strade del Suono in Genoa, Monferrato Classica, Accademia Chigiana, Mantova Trame Sonore, Teatro Sociale in Como.
In 2018, he received a commission for a concerto for mandolin and orchestra for Avi Avital and in 2020 a piece for solo viola "In Freiheit" and a concerto for Simone Gramaglia.
He records for da Vinci Publishing, Brilliant Classic, Sconfinarte, and Ema Vinci, with which he won the Siae "Per chi Crea" 2019 grant.
In 2021, together with the Indaco Quartet, he published in collaboration with Sconfinarte house in Milan the ambitious Dante 21 project, in which he participates both as a performer and as a composer. In the same year, the first volume of his compositions for solo piano was released, and the following year his debut album as a solo cellist and conductor with the Milano Classica chamber orchestra, Tales of Dusk.
In 2021, his second fiction book "Intorno alla Musica" was published by NeoClassica, a small anthology of reflections on the future of classical music in Western society and the role of the classical musician in the imminent future.
In 2024, with the victory of the "Per chi Crea" grant, he recorded with the Milano Classica Chamber Orchestra a monographic of his works for string orchestra (Trittico), with Giovanni Sollima participating as solo cellist.
He plays a Charles Claudot cello from 1840, which he owns.
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