Roberto Molinelli

The activities of musician Roberto Molinelli are exceptionally wide-ranging, including viola performance, composition, conducting, arranging in genres from opera to popular song, and more. He is also an educator. Molinelli was born in 1963 in Ancona, Italy. He studied at the Conservatorio Rossini di Pesaro, majoring in viola and graduating with honors. Molinelli has remained active as a violist and has appeared in top Italian concert halls such as the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome and the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. He has taken viola solos in collaborations with Italian orchestras and served as artistic director of the Bologna Chamber Orchestra for a time. Molinelli has made several recordings as a violist, including the world premiere recording of the Drei Phantasiestücke for viola and piano, Op. 43, of Carl Reinecke. Molinelli is on the viola faculty at the Conservatorio di Musica Luisa d'Annunzio in Pescara, Italy. His saxophone concerto "Four Pictures from New York" was heard on the 2012 album Summertime by saxophonist Otis Murphy, and he made several recordings as a conductor. Molinelli's activities as a composer are equally broad in range. He has written music in major classical genres, including opera (one of his operas, Montessoriana, was written for the centennial of educator Maria Montessori in 2007 and was produced in Sweden, the U.S., and Italy.) His symphonic works have been premiered in such venues as Carnegie Hall in New York, the Teatro Comunale in Bologna, and the Hermitage Theatre in St. Petersburg, Russia, by ensembles such as the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento, the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra, and the Moscow Chamber Orchestra. Molinelli has also been involved with jazz and pop performances and recordings, often as an arranger, and he has worked with such major singers as Andrea Bocelli and Sarah Brightman. A Molinelli composition written for a Barilla pasta advertising campaign ran continuously on Italian television from 1999 to 2006. In 2023, Molinelli conducted the Haydn Orchestra of Bolzano and Trento in a Naxos recording of his own Viola Concerto and an arrangement of William Walton's Cello Concerto, performed by violist Anna Serova.
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