bio

Laura ZATTRA is a scholar of twentieth/twenty-first-century music, with a special emphasis on avant-gardism, electroacoustic music, creative process studies, collaboration studies, science and technology studies, history of media and recording technologies, sound design and sound in filmmaking, underrepresented profiles and women composers/musicians. Her research methods incorporate archival research and its theorization in private and institutional music archives, ethnography, oral history, philology and analysis.

She currently is appointed as Adjunct Professor at the Conservatoires of music of Rovigo and Vicenza (Italy) where she teaches the History of Electroacoustic Music, the History of Sound Design in Cinema and the History of Music in Cinema in Bachelor and Master Programmes.

She is associate researcher at the APM équipe (Analyse des Pratiques Musicales) at IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) in Paris, and associate researcher at the Laboratoire IReMus (Institut de recherche en Musicologie) at Sorbonne in Paris. She is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Musica/Tecnologia – Music/Technology (Firenze University Press) since 2019 (http://www.fupress.net/index.php/mt), member of the Editorial Commitee of the Analyses Project, IRCAM Paris since 2015 (http://brahms.ircam.fr/analyses/), member of the Editorial Commitee of the journal Organised Sound since 2019 (Cambridge University Press) and Echo (Orpheus Institute) since 2021.

Since 2002 she is the founder of the research group RISME DIGITALI with Giacomo Albert, https://www.sidm.it/index.php/it/chi-siamo/1030 (hosted by the Italian Society of Musicology).

She serves or has served as reviewer of scientific research papers for national and international journals and conferences (Organised Sound, Echo, Oxford Handbooks Online, Contemporary Music Review, Interference – a Journal of Audio Culture, Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale, Journal of th American Musicological Sociecy, Gli Spazi della Musica / conferences: EMS International Electroacoustic Music Studies Conference, NOVA Contemporary Music Meeting, CIM Italy, SMC Sound and Music Computing, Simposio Internacional de Arte Sonoro), as well as reviewer for research grant applications to national, international and European granting agencies (University of Lethbridge, European commission, Swiss National Science Foundation, MIUR), and member of the jury for PhD thesis defences (e.g. Agostino Di Scipio, Paris VIII 2019 – Francesco Giomi, Università di Firenze 2021-22 – Mathew Lacroix, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, Norway 2022).

In 2022-2023, she is principal inversigator with François Xavier Féron and others of the project RAMHO (Recherche et acoustique musicales en France : une histoire orale (2021-24). She is in charge of the interviews with John Chowning (27 hours), and Giuseppe Di Giugno, Tod Machover, Roger Reynolds, Marco Stroppa, Sylviane Sapir, among others (https://www.ircam.fr/media/uploads/uploads/Rapports%20activite/rapport-activite-2021-ircam.pdf).

During 2024, she’s been invited as a keynote speaker at the ZhDK, Zuercher Hochschule der Kunst, at the TENOR 2024 conference. In the last two years she’s been invited to be part of the scientific committee of the Journal Echo (Orpheus Institute) (Gent, Belgium); invited speaker at the ZhDK, Zuercher Hochschule der Kunst, for the Symposium: Performing Live Electronic Music (22 September – 24 September 2022), https://www.zhdk.ch/en/event/48138; invited speaker at the international conference Xenakis: back to the roots, Universitat fur Musik und darstellende Kunst, Wien (19-21 May 2022) with the talk, “Archives, Sources, persons and personae in the Art of Sounds of the XX-XXI century”, https://www.mdw.ac.at/imi/?PageId=4325. On 27 October 2002 invited Keynote speaker at the XXIII CIM (Colloquio di Informatica Musicale), Ancona and organizer (with Sylviane Sapir and Anna Terzaroli) of the roundtable I generi della musica elettronica. “Non esistono né modi maschili, né femminili” (Teresa Rampazzi, 1983).

In 2021-22-23 she has lectured for the series “Invited Online Lecture. Series on Electroacoustic Music Analysis” in 2021 for 6 academic hours (2 lessons) at the Estonian Academy of Music and Theatre (EAMT) in TALLINN (Eesti Muusika- ja Teatriakadeemia Tatari 13, 10116, Tallinn, Harjumaa) on 7 and 14 May 2021 (Estonia); and in 2022 for 20 hours. She has been invited to teach a masterclass for “Conferenze di Musicologia – Il processo creativo del Prometeo di Luigi Nono 20 maggio 2021”, Conservatorio Statale di Musica Cesare Pollini, Padova on 20 May 2021 (Italy). In 2020, she’s been invited to be part of the scientific committee of the new-born Centro di Ricerca Interdipartimentale per la Radiofonia (CRIR) part of the University of San Marino. In 2018 she was Invited Lecturer (Guest Faculty) for the (Master of Arts) Sound Studies and Sonic Arts at the Universität der Künste in Berlin (June 2018), and keynote speaker at the Electroacoustic Music Conference in Florence (Italy, June 2018).

In the last year September 2022-December 2023 she has published: 1) François-Xavier Féron, Laura Zattra (2023). L’EMPREINTE DE JOHN CHOWNING DANS LA CONSTRUCTION DE L’IRCAM : DE SA RENCONTRE AVEC PIERRE BOULEZ EN 1973 A LA CREATION DE STRIA EN 1977. 2023, pp. 123-132 ⟨halshs-04140906⟩; 2) Zattra L. (2022), “Collaborative Creation in Electroacoustic Music Practices and Self-Awareness in the Work of Musical Assistants Marino Zuccheri, Alvise Vidolin, and Carl Faia)”, in Jonathan Impett (ed.) Sound Work: Composition as Critical Technical Practice (Leuven University Press / Orpheus Institute, 2021), pp. 261-278, (PDF: 2022_SoundWork-ZattraZUCCHERIVIDOFAIA); 3) Laura Zattra (2022), “Angelo Paccagnini ed Eugenio Carmi. In hoc vivo vinces“, in Angelo Paccagnini. L’utopista indipendente, a cura di Maria Maddalena Novati e Marina Vaccarini, Milano: Die Schachtel / NoMus, 2022, pp. 89-100; 4) Zattra, Book Review Agostino Di Scipio, Circuiti del Tempo. Un percorso storico-critico nella creatività musicale elettroacustica e informatica, Lucca, LIM, 2021, 632 pagine, for the RATM Rivista di Analisi e Teoria Musicale. Anno XXVIII n. 1, 2022, pp. 139-146.

Always interested in the popularizazion of music, and music and technology, she has been invited to write a column for the site musicaelettronica.it site (Tempo Reale, Centro di Ricerca, Produzione e Didattica Musicale Tempo Reale). She decided to write about Musica, tecnologia e società attraverso le fonti (Music, Technology and Society by the use of sources). https://www.musicaelettronica.it/tag/laura-zattra/.

She has published on the music of John Chowning, Luigi Nono, Salvatore Sciarrino, Angelo Paccagnini, Agostino Di Scipio, Teresa Rampazzi, Renata Zatti, collaboration in electroacoustic music and musical assistants (computer music designers), the analysis of sound design practices, the philology and genetic analysis in the avant-garde music, and on theoretical and taxonomy issues in the study of electroacoustic music.

She has published for Routledge Live-Electronic Music. Composition, Performance and Study, with Friedemann Sallis, Valentina Bertolani and Jan Burle, Routledge, 2018 (out in November 2017), a book that “examines questions related to music that cannot be set in conventional notation, reporting and reflecting on current research and creative practice primarily in live electronic music. It studies compositions for which the musical text is problematic, that is, non-existent, incomplete, insufficiently precise or transmitted in a nontraditional format”.  

Her monograph Studiare la computer music, Definizioni, analisi, fonti (2011)provides a critical analysis of the historical-analytical issues in Computer Music, considering both the material sources themselves (heterogeneity of sources, sketches, versions and variants), and the larger cultural implications of their creative process. It focuses on the works of six composers who worked at IRCAM in Paris and the CSC (Centro di Sonologia Computazionale dell’Università di Padova) in Italy.

In 2008, her article “The Assembling of Stria by John Chowning: A Philological Investigation” (Computer Music Journal. “The Reconstruction of Stria”, 31:3, pp.38-64, Fall 2007, MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology) was the second most frequently downloaded Computer Music Journal article in the year preceding July 1, 2008, other than free sample articles.

She has also published the monograph Musica e famiglia. L’avventura artistica di Renata Zatti (2010); the critical edition of Renata Zatti. Invenzione musicale (2012); and the co-editions of Vent’anni di musica elettronica all’università di Padova. Il Centro di sonologia computazionale (with S. Durante, 2002); and Presenza storica di Luigi Nono (with A.I. De Benedictis, 2011).

Prior to joining the faculty at Milan, Vicenza and Rovigo Conservatories of music (Italy), Laura Zattra taught at Parma, Castelfranco Veneto and Bologna Conservatories and at Padova University (history of music, philology and analysis of music, music pedagogy), and was post-doc and then senior researcher at the University of Padova (2004 – 2012). She was twice invited researcher to work at IRCAM: from the French CNRS in 2012 (Project: “Contribution à l’histoire des interactions arts/science: l’émergence de la réalisation en informatique musicale”), and in 2017 (Projet: “l’Etat de la recherche Musicale/Artistique”). She has participated in several research projects with Calgary University (Canada), the DeMonfort University (UK), the Sorbonne University (Paris) among others.