Federico Gardella was born in Milan in 1979.
His music has featured in many important festivals and concert seasons in Tokyo (Tokyo Opera City), Milano (Milano Musica), Royaumont (Voix Nouvelles), New York (Columbia University), Firenze (Maggio Musicale Fiorentino), Riga (Great Guild Concert Hall), Erl (Tiroler Festspiele), Torino (Rai NuovaMusica), Porto (Casa da Música), Lodz (Lodz Philharmonic Hall), Parma (Traiettorie), Guanajuato (Festival Internacional Cervantino), Bruxelles (Flagey), Venezia (La Biennale), Lausanne (Société de Musique Contemporaine), Takefu (Takefu International Music Festival), Roma (Auditorium Parco della Musica), Lubiana (Slovenian Philharmonic) and Madrid (Auditorio Nacional de Música).
In 2025-26 Season he will take part in the Sonata for 7 Cities project by Filippo Gorini (Sonata d’altura, September 2025), will make his debut with the Orchestra Ensemble Kanazawa (Madre, February 2026) and will return with the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai (A tempest, April 2026).
In August, his new opera will be staged at the Teatro Lirico Sperimentale in Spoleto.
He won prizes in many international composition competitions and in 2009 he was assigned the Takefu International Composition Award.
In 2012 he was awarded the First Prize of the Toru Takemitsu Composition Award in Tokyo and in 2014 he was assigned the “Una Vita nella Musica – Giovani” Prize at the Teatro La Fenice in Venezia.
He has been composer in residence at the Divertimento Ensemble, the Fondation Royaumont, the Festival Neue Musik Rockenhausen and Marcello Lotti Italian Fellow in Music at the American Academy in Rome.
His works, conducted among others by Marco Angius, Zsolt Nagy, Tito Ceccherini, Wolfram Christ, Carlo Boccadoro and Jonathan Webb, have been performed by orchestras such as the Orchestra Sinfonica Nazionale della Rai, the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra, the Orchestra del Teatro La Fenice, the Latvian National Symphony Orchestra, the Orchestra del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, the Deutsche Staatsphilharmonie, the Orchestra del Teatro Petruzzelli and the Hiroshima Symphony Orchestra.
He collaborates with chamber groups and ensembles specialized in the contemporary repertoire, such as the Arditti Quartet, the Quatuor Diotima, the Hilliard Ensemble, the Neue Vocalsolisten Stuttgart, the Remix Ensemble e the Scharoun Ensemble of the Berliner Philharmoniker.
In 2021 his first opera, Else (based on Fräulein Else by Arthur Schnitzler), was premiered at the Cantiere Internazionale d’Arte in Montepulciano directed by Cecilia Ligorio, set and costumes design by Domenico Franchi. In the same year it opened the Opera Season of the Fondazione I Teatri of Reggio Emilia (Festival Aperto/Teatro Ariosto).
His works have been broadcast on the radio in France (Radio France), Italy (Radio Tre), Australia (ABC Radio), Sweden (Sveriges Radio), Netherlands (NPO), Hong Kong (RTHK), Japan (NHK), Austria (ORF), Iceland (RÚV) and Germany (SWR).
Federico Gardella studied the piano at the Milan Conservatory with Piero Rattalino and Riccardo Risaliti and at the Universität der Künste in Berlin with Klaus Hellwig . He studied composition at the Milan Conservatory with Sonia Bo and Alessandro Solbiati and at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome with Azio Corghi.
Moreover, his acquaintance with Toshio Hosokawa has been of significant importance to his artistic path.
Since 2016 he is one of the artistic advisors of the Fondazione Campus Internazionale di Musica in Latina.
His music is published by SZ Sugar.
(September 2025)