Michele Tadini to Lead La Biennale di Venezia Music Department

Composer Michele Tadini will serve as Artistic Director of the Music Department of La Biennale di Venezia for the 2027–28 cycle. The Biennale's Board of Directors approved the appointment. Board chairman Pietrangelo Buttafuoco led the decision. Tadini's music is published by SZ Sugar.

His first International Festival of Contemporary Music under the new directorship will run in Venice from October 2 to 16 — a fifteen-day window that anchors the department's programming mandate.

What did Tadini say about the appointment?

Tadini accepted the post with a statement that framed the role as both a personal milestone and a public obligation.

"I am deeply grateful and honoured," Tadini said. "Over a lifetime of work, learning, research, hypotheses, definitions, order and disorder, every composer/researcher asks questions about music, its reasons, its necessities. Seeking answers, they search their souls, and form convictions about what to do and what to say."

He described the directorship as the moment when those private convictions must become public programming. "I have now been entrusted to give concrete shape to these thoughts," he said. "In addition to gratitude, I feel a deep sense of responsibility. What I will say and do will not only be an expression of what I believe is important, it must also be important for the public and for music itself."

Tadini closed his statement by pointing to the collaborative process ahead: "This ambition, which is inseparable from a sense of responsibility, will guide me in my decisions and in building a project which I can already glimpse, but which will take shape through dialogue, through my work and collaboration with the entire Biennale team."

The takeaway: Tadini positions the Venice post as the culmination of a composer's research, not merely an administrative role.

Who is Michele Tadini?

Tadini holds a professorship in composition — mixed music — at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique et de Danse de Lyon. He completed his studies at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan.

His career carries two major distinctions:

• The 2008 Prix Italia for the radio work La Musica Nascosta.
• The 2011 Prix ARTS — for Art, Research, Technology, Science — for the project La Terza Luce.

Both awards sit within a five-year span and both honor work that crosses formats: one a radio composition, the other a project recognized at the intersection of art, research, technology and science.

What happens next in Venice?

The October 2–16 festival will be the first test of Tadini's vision for the Music Department, and his statement makes clear he intends to build the programme collaboratively with the Biennale staff rather than arrive with a finished blueprint. In short: the composer-researcher now takes over one of contemporary music's most visible institutional platforms, with his first festival three months of Venice autumn away.