Biography
Marco Elia Righi
Marco Elia Righi (born in Montecchio Emilia, Italy in 1998) is a Horn player and composer trained at the Reggio Emilia Conservatory. The son of a bassoonist, he began studying the horn at the age of eight under Maestro Imerio Tagliaferri, subsequently earning his First and Second Level academic diplomas with top marks in 2018 and 2020. Regarding his orchestral career, he qualified as principal horn with the UNIMI (State University of Milan) Orchestra in 2023 and has been collaborating as a section horn player with the Luigi Cherubini Youth Orchestra since 2024, under the direction of Riccardo Muti.
He began studying composition in 2015 — first with Maurizio Ferrari and later with Marco Longo — earning his First and Second Level academic diplomas in 2022 and 2024, both with highest honors (cum laude). His work as a composer has garnered both recognition and commissions: in 2019, his orchestral piece In Silva won first prize at the OGVE (Aemilian Way Youth Orchestra) composition competition and was subsequently played in the 2019/2020 symphonic season.
In 2022, the Reggio Emilia Conservatory commissioned him to write a piece inspired by Omar Galliani’s painting Chlorophelia, which was performed under the baton of Marco Boni. In 2023, his work Richiami placed second in the "Lost Music" call for scores organized by ForlìMusica; in 2024, his orchestral composition Foresta di sogni won first prize in the "Il viaggio artistico" competition promoted by MUVIG (Garofolo Virtual Museum). In 2025, he won the first prize in the composition category of the Giuseppe Alberghini Prize (Bologna) with his piece for harp and guitar, Finissimi sistri d’argento. Also scheduled for 2025 is the world premiere of To Set the Future Alight — a work for a solo performer and percussion set dedicated to Roberto Fontanella — at the prestigious KMSKA Museum in Antwerp.
Since 2018, his works and arrangements have been commissioned and performed in Italy and abroad by ensembles and institutions such as L’Ora della Musica, the Fondazione Nazionale della Danza (in collaboration with Fotografia Europea), Icarus vs Muzak, the Placard Wind Quintet, FORM (Marche Regional Orchestra), Sinfonietta Rīga, and the Wunderkammer Orchestra. He has collaborated with musicians and conductors such as Dale Clevenger, Hervé Joulain, Simone Gramaglia, Marco Boni, Antonio De Lorenzi, Michele Gamba, and Kaspars Ādamson. Several of his compositions have been recorded by labels including Zeer Music and TYXart Records, and his works are published by Edizioni Notami (Italy) and Kammermusikverlag (Germany).
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Discography
Most Representative Works
Listen to a selection of my best compositions – a window into my eclectic musical vision.
Foresta di sogni
The theme of the journey has always accompanied my music, and it plays a central role in Foresta di sogni (for large orchestra). The piece is freely inspired by Charles Baudelaire's sonnet Correspondances, exploring the concept of synesthesia (the ability to weave together the threads of our senses) within a musical context. Through synesthetic sensations, Foresta di sogni evokes a journey into my inner world. The exploration of the unconscious mind unfolds through scene changes that feel at times sudden, yet always interconnected and organic. It is said that when we listen to a piece of music, it is the music that changes, whereas when we look at a painting, it is we who change. The listening experience of Foresta aims to unite both perspectives. It is my hope that, after being immersed in this short piece, a part of you emerges renewed.
Segni
Few elements of the modern soundscape have remained unchanged, or nearly so, over the last fifteen centuries. One of these is certainly the sound of bells, which (at least in Europe) still marks the passage of time in both urban and rural contexts. Discovering that two families in my family tree were bell ringers—a profession passed down from father to son and considered equivalent to that of "musici" (musicians)—led me to seek the basis for my composition in the repertoire of bell-ringing typical of my city, Reggio Emilia. The musical source material for the piece is based on several melodies and bell-ringing patterns collected by the Reggio Emilia composer Guglielmo Mattioli just over a century ago, in 1922, and also on spectrographic analysis of the bell concert of the Basilica della Ghiara in Reggio. The purpose of my piece is not to imitate the sound of bells—perhaps among the most inimitable, for the richness and uniqueness of their timbre—but to evoke what this sound has signified over the centuries: births, deaths, marriages, invasions, epidemics, victories... The passage, recounted in sounds, of History in the stories and lives of ordinary people. Lives held together by "signs" (Segni)—the ringing of bells at Mass and solemn celebrations—even across the centuries.
Canti di cavalieri
Canti di cavalieri (Songs of Knights) is a suite of seven miniatures from the folk repertoire. It was first composed in 2024 in a version for solo piano. I first came in contact with the folksongs in this collection thanks to the extraordinary etnomusicological research of Marcello Conati, in his book Canti popolari della Val d’Enza e della Val Cedra (Folksongs of Val d’Enza and Val Cedra). The two valleys are a fascinating land comprised in the mountain region of the provinces of Reggio Emilia an Parma, a territory that has been known for centuries as the “Valley of Knights”. I feel a stong connection with the songs of this land because my family tree extends largely in the provinces of Reggio Emilia and Parma, even though not specifically in the Valley of Knights. Many times, during the numerous rewrites of the piece, I’ve asked myself whether my ancestors knew ans sang the songs in this collection. Even if at the moment I can’t know for certain, I feel a sort of visceral connection with some of these songs at an energetic, almost “genetic” level - almost as they have always been part of my life, even if I have known them only for the last couple of years.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s concerto K412 is universally recognized as one of the cornerstones of horn repertoire. Although the concerto is often listed in concert programs as “No. 1,” most likely the date of composition dates back to the last year of Mozart’s life (1791), making it in fact his last work for horn and orchestra. Only a few fragments remain of the manuscript, left unfinished by Mozart, and completed by his favorite pupil, Franz-Xaver Süssmayr. While in the first movement (Allegro) Süssmayr’s interpolations concern only the orchestral fillings of the woodwinds, in the rondo they are much more pronounced, de facto constituting a reworking that deviates greatly from the original. This edition aims to return to the performer a complete version of the concerto, preserving the first movement from the original manuscripts, adding an andante written in Mozart’s style and playable on the natural horn, and reconstructing the original version of the rondo.