Leonardo Nevari, born in Italy in 1992, began playing the piano at the age of six. He studied piano and compos­i­tion at the I.S.S.M. Boccherini in Lucca and at the Talent Music Master Academy in Brescia, gradu­ating with distinc­tion in 2015. He went on to complete a Master’s degree in Music Perform­ance at the Conser­vatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano, where he later earned a second Master’s degree in Theory and Compos­i­tion. He is currently a doctoral candidate in Artistic Research at the Lucerne Univer­sity of Applied Sciences and Arts.

As a pianist, Nevari has won numerous inter­na­tional compet­i­tions and performed throughout Europe as a soloist, chamber musi­cian, and with orches­tras — including appear­ances at the Royal Albert Hall in London, the Wiener Saal in Salzburg, LAC Lugano, and the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. His reper­toire spans from Baroque to contem­porary music, with a partic­ular focus on New Music. He has performed works by Boulez, Stock­hausen, and Kurtág, among others, as a member of the ensemble 900 presente. Since 2016, he has also collab­or­ated in chamber music with the Polish double bassist Klaudia Baca.

Since 2016, Nevari has increas­ingly devoted himself to compos­i­tion, impro­visa­tion, and sound art. His works have been premiered at the EAR Fest­ival Lugano, Fest­ival Rümlingen, and by the Phil­har­monic Orchestra of Częstochowa, among others. His sound install­a­tions include commis­sioned works for the Italian Navy and for LAC Lugano. In 2022, with the support of Pro Helvetia, he traveled to Nepal to explore Buddhist concepts of time and their rela­tion­ship to music. His most recent projects operate at the inter­sec­tion of music, ritual, and perform­ance — such as Lympha, an exper­i­mental work for voice, water, and elec­tronics.

During his resid­ency at Villa Sonnen­berg, Leonardo Nevari is devel­oping Black Snow — an exper­i­mental music theatre work for solo piano based on Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis. In this piece, the text is trans­formed into pure musical gesture: word­less, yet imbued with the emotional depth and expressive power of the original.

www.leonardonevari.com