- September 24, 2026
My work revolves around perception and micro-expression: how small sonic gestures can shift the way a piece is heard and felt.
Repetition, fragile or unstable sounds, and complex drones are central to my musical language. They tend to produce moments that are either unpredictable or too intricate to notate precisely, which is part of why I lean toward graphic scores, passing some of the decision-making around timing and expression over to the performers.
This opens things up: the ensemble collectively shapes the pacing and form in real time, through listening, cues, and musical gestures. I’m interested in creating conditions where the interactions between musicians generate their own artefacts, a degree of serendipity that’s built into the process. Each performance ends up being its own thing, slightly different from the last.
This concept translates entirely in my improvisational practice: I like to create glitchy and fragile systems, where exploration is an integral part of performance.
Samuele Giulio Ferrari (b. 2001, Milan) is an Italian composer currently based in Salzburg, Austria.
He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in composition at Mozarteum University Salzburg with Achim Bornhöft. Important additional educational impulses came from Chaya Czernowin, Sarah Nemtsov, Marco Döttlinger, Christian Ofenbauer, Bálint Bolcsó, and Laure M. Hiendl.
His music has been performed at venues such as Limina Festival (Salzburg), [Con]tempo Festival (Salamanca), House Of Music Hungary (Budapest), ISCM Avant-Garde 100 (Vilnius), Musikforum Viktring-Klagenfurt, “Neue Musik in St. Ruprecht” (Vienna). Collaborations with ensembles such as NAMES, Ensemble Wiener Collage, Twenty Fingers Duo, Oenm, Duo Strings&Noise, Duo Ovocutters, and the vocal ensemble Cantando Admont.
In 2024, he eceived the Gustav Mahler Prize from Musikforum Viktring.
Alongside fellow colleagues Nicolas Speda and Tibor Victor Hugo Kovacs, he founded a collective for electroacoustic improvisation called “Bean$ Collective” which celebrated its debut in June 2025 with “Drone Day Salzburg” a 7-hour improvisational performance focused on the genre of Drone Music. Here, Samuele improvises on an 8-string electric guitar with an array of analog FX pedals and live electronics.