Luigi Porto

Luigi Porto (born 22 November 1981, Cosenza) is an Italian composer, sound designer and music producer.
He has released albums of Art rock and Electroacoustic music, often covering social philosophy and political topics has been a member of the Italian band and is an author of symphonic music and film soundtracks.
Music career
Born in Cosenza, Italy he started his career playing in local New Wave music bands and writing music for local theater companies. In the early 2000s Porto produced a number of self-released works that circulated locally and among the Italian experimental underground scene, like the electronic album My My After World and in 2006 the Italian label Cold Current Productions released the concept album Look At Me under the monicker Appleyard College, that merged a slacker, lo-fi songwriting with chamber arrangements and electronic music.
In 2006 he joined the Italian band as a multi-instrumentalist and arranger, collaborating on the albums and especially released on where he composed and produced several songs and played bass, synthesizers and acoustic guitar in the band's national tours. The album was declared Best Italian Progressive Rock album for the decade 2000-2020 by Rolling Stone.
In 2008 Porto wrote the soundtrack to Romano Scavolini's ', an experimental film in three parts that is still unreleased to this day. The soundtrack, partially merged into the album Scimmie was released without the film by the Austrian label Cineploit along with Snowdonia Dischi and distributed in the US by Light in the Attic. The album contains chamber ensembles and Renaissance choirs subsequently processed, hip-hop and electronics. Scimmie gathered attention from critics in Italy and its tracks Distaste and Cecilia o la Danza Spinata (that features the folk singer on vocals) got featured by Stuart Maconie on his Freak Zone on BBC Radio helping to spread the album in the European experimental music scene.
In the meanwhile Porto had moved to New York. In 2012, after performing as a keyboardist on João MacDowell's opera Plastic Flowers, the International Brazilian Opera Company commissioned his first opera is Anita di Laguna, a work inspired by the life of the Brazilian revolutionary Anita Garibaldi. The orchestral Suite from the opera was commissioned in 2019 by the Orchestra Sinfonica di Sanremo in Europe, and in the US scenes from the opera were performed at Carnegie Hall, .
In 2018 Porto collaborated with Angelo Badalamenti for the score of Between Worlds. In 2019 he curated both score and sound design to Arberia, a film shot in Arbëresh language, and to the Indian film Uljhan-The Knot, premiered in 2020.
In 2021 he released Tell Uric on his own label Respirano Records, a return to the song form with a rock lineup core, that applies the instrumental eclecticism of Scimmie to a songwriting inspired by the author's personal reflections on the concept of predestination applied to social class and spiritual caste. Preceded by the single Morningside, the album also features the theme from Uljhan-The Knot for piano trio and synth.
In 2023 Porto founded the band Manicburg in New York City, with composer Ray Lustig, a Juilliard professor and former Pulitzer Prize juror.
Besides music, Porto is also a film sound designer.
Bibliography
* Antonello Cresti, Solchi Sperimentali Italia. 50 anni di italiche musiche altre, Crac Edizioni, 2015, ISBN 978-88-97389-24-8
* Gianluca Testani (a cura di), Enciclopedia del rock italiano, Arcana Editrice, 2006, ISBN 88-7966-422-0

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