Matteo Silva

Matteo Silva is a well known composer, music producer, ethnomusicologist and visual artist. He was born in october 1960 in Ulm, Germany, from German mother and Italian father, grew up in Bologna, Italy and Lugano, Switzerland, studied composition at Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Milan with Niccolò Castiglioni and philosophy in Venice with Emanuele Severino; he is founder of the independent music record label Amiata Records; as radio editor he collaborated with [http://retedue.rsi.ch/home/networks/retedue.html Rete 2], a cultural channel of the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and produced the “Encyclopedia of World Music” in 76 volumes for the Italian RCS Rizzoli Group published by Fabbri; for the group “Espresso – La Repubblica” he produced, among other series, a very popular CD series of “World Music”, a work that for the first time in Italy let music of less known cultures be accessible to a larger audience. Another remarkable project produced for the "Espresso - La Repubblica" group has been " La grande musica della Sardegna" a CD series on all different traditional music styles in Sardinia approached in a musicological way but published for the first time outside the academic circuits with great public success.

For Amiata Records, Wergo, and other independent record labels he produced more than 130 contemporary and ethnic music CDs in the USA, Germany, France and Italy. With Skeye music, he brought Carla Bruni and her first album “Quel qu’un m’à dit” to Italy just like the “Overhead” music group and other French and English artists. He produced music by artists like Arvo Pärt, Terry Riley, Steve Reich, Sainkho, Ustad Nishat Khan, i Fratelli Mancuso, Faraualla, Sangeeta Badyopadhnay, Michael Vetter, Hans Otte, Gabin Dabiré, the Club Musical Oriente Cubano, Chögyal Namkhai Norbu, the Monks of the Sera Jé Monastery, The Bauls of Bengal.

He often travelled to Asia, particularly in the Himalayan regions, where he documented and recorded several musical ceremonies of endangered ethnic groups such as the Bön and Gurung, and where he committed himself to the documentation of numerous Tibetan Buddhist ceremonies in exile and of the traditional songs of the nomads of the Kham region (eastern Tibet), of which he published a few CDs. In Italy, together with musicologist Walter Maioli, he has been the creator of the archaeological musical project, Synaulia. He also produced and edited the music of Synaulia for Amiata Records and published “The Music of Ancient Rome” in 2 volumes (volume I Wind Instruments, volume II String Instruments). Excerpts of this work have been licensed to several major films and TV Series such as [The Gladiator], [The Village], [Rome] and several documentaries produced by the BBC, the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation and RAI.

As composer he published the electronic music albums Solaris (1991) Ad Infinitum (1993) and Omphalos (2001) soundtracks of his sound&light installations. Apart from his producing and editing activities, Matteo Silva is also a visual artist, professor, author of essays, poetry and prose. As musicologist he wrote Music for Peace (1999), Beyond Music (2004), Copyright in digital media (2008). Matteo Silva has been director of the MIM ( Music Industry Management) Program at the European School of Economics in London. He now resides in the countryside, north of Rome, Italy, and in his free time he is a passionate skipper. Provided by Wikipedia