Simone Rubino, percussions

John Cage
The Third Construction

Casey Cangelosi
Bad Touch

Lamberto Curtoni
Quel Metro che ci Avvicina
testi di Mariangela Gualtieri

Alexey Gerassimez
Asventuras

J.S.Bach
Ciaccona in re minore dalla seconda sonata per violino 

Tan Dun
Water Spirit 

Minoru Miki
Marimba Spiritual

Watch the video
Maki Ishii – Thirteen drums - Simone Rubino

"Thanks to our collaboration with composers, we manage to develop the technique of percussion instruments, which is an ever-evolving process. It's not like the violin, whose technique was already perfected by Paganini. With percussions, it could be that a talented child comes along tomorrow and manages to do something that has never been heard before. So composers certainly help to abolish the technical limits that still exist. Technical and musical limits, because expressing something through music with an instrument like the piano is completely different from expressing it with percussion instruments or the marimba. Therefore, it is a question of finding the most suitable "language" – metaphorically speaking – that helps to express the idea or the musical colours wanted by the composer."

Simone Rubino was born in Turin in 1993 and is the 2017 winner of the Italian critics' Abbiati Prize for the "Best musician". Thanks to his incredible energy and radiant enthusiasm, he has led percussions to be a fully-fledged solo instrument. Numerous awards and prestigious collaborations have enabled him to become an absolute reference, so much so that Rubino is the dedicatee of new compositions and has contributed to promoting a repertoire in which rhythm is the most prominent element. Avner Dorman, Carlo Boccadoro, Roberto Bocca, Adriano Gaglianello and Aziza Sadikova have written pieces for him. A fine connoisseur of all genres – from baroque to jazz – Rubino advocates a return to improvisation and the need for rigorous study of the score. Contemporary music is his chosen language, which evolves together with the instrument he chose as a child for its infinite technical and expressive possibilities. 

He will arrive in Lugano with a programme of contemporary pieces for all sorts of percussion instruments, from the marimba to the body itself.