Bio | Quartetto Maurice

Georgia Privitera (1983) violin
Laura Bertolino (1984) violin
Francesco Vernero (1990) alto
Aline Privitera (1987) cello

Since its formation in 2002, a constant and tireless research on sound has been the trait that has best distinguished the Quartetto Maurice. After an in-depth investigation of the traditional classical repertoire, which has guaranteed a meticulous approach to the score and an extreme attention to the performance’s details, the Quartet showed the need to place the music of 20th and 21th centuries at the heart of its repertoire, exploring a great variety of contemporary languages.

The 4+1 project – where «4» stands for the string quartet and «1» is for electronics – highlights the will of the Quartet to consider electronics as the full fifth member of the group, and to emphasize its «cameristic» aspect, capturing the suggestions offered by electronics, giving it a new relevance in the acoustic environment, and finally creating a flow of innovations in sound that resonates one with each other.

In 2019 release for Stradivarius Italian Label with music for string quartet and electronics by Fausto Romitelli, Mauro Lanza, Andrea Agostini, Silvia Borzelli within the project SIAE - classici di oggi.

Over the years, the Quartetto Maurice carried out an intensive training in the contemporary music repertoire, together with the greatest performers and composers of the international scene like Márta and György Kurtág, Helmut Lachenmann, Philippe Manoury, Marco Stroppa, Beat Furrer, Mauro Lanza, Chaya Czernowin, Simon Steen-Andersen,Clara Iannotta, Arditti Quartet Quatuor Diotima, Klangforum Wien, Geneviève Strosser, etc. It is active in promoting new music through commissions to young composers, keeping an open mind on the complex contemporary music panorama.

Regularly invited to perform at the most important festivals and concert seasons across Europe, North and South America, the Quartet has performed through Italy and abroad, in a number of prestigious venues including the Venice Biennale, November Music Festival in 's-Hertogenbosch (Holland), the Biennale Zagreb, the Festival Mixtur in Barcelona (Spain), the Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik, the Italian Academy of Columbia University in New York (USA ), the Italian Istitut of Culture and for ProQuartet in Paris, the Festival Tzlil Meudcan in Tel Aviv (Israel), the Distat Terra festival in Argentina, the New Music Festival in Macerata (italy), the International Fajr Music Festival in Tehran (Iran), Open Music in Graz (Austria) and New Music Festival in Vancouver (Canada).

The Quartet has been tutor and quartet in residence at the 2021 Impuls Academy (Graz), at Distat Terra Festival in Argentina, at Fondazione I Teatri Reggio Emilia - Casa del Quartetto with string quartet students and at 2021 Bludenzer Tage zeitgemäßer Musik and it holds a workshop since 2017 at the conservatory of Turin G. Verdi with the classes of electronics and composition.

The Quartet received the support of several institutions such as De Sono – Associazione per la Musica (Turin), Freunde und Förderer des Internationalen Musikinstituts (Darmstadt), ProQuartet Association (Paris), CIDIM (Comitato Nazionale Italiano Musica). It has been selected to partecipated in the workshop for quartet+electronic in the framework of the Ulysses-Journeys during "ManiFeste 2017", supported by IRCAM in collaboration with ProQuartet. It was also participating to the project "Le dimore del quartetto", in collaboration with ADSI.

It won a support within the project MOVIN' UP 2016, for the artists mobility, from GAI (Giovani artisti italiani) in collaboration wiht the Italian Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The Quartet won the 35th Italian Music Critics Award «Franco Abbiati» dedicated to the memory of Piero Farulli in 2015 and the Kranichsteiner Stipendium Preis at the 48th Ferienkurse fur Neue Musik in Darmstadt in 2016.

In 2016 the quartet founded the Association "Metamorfosi Notturne" to organize new events related to the fields of contemporary music, electronic sound and avant-garde research. The Association's institutional goals include promoting and disseminating new musical languages, through the organization of concerts, festivals, conferences and through the production of recording and publishing material.

The Association organizes “Musica in Prossimità”, a festival of contemporary music, based in Pinerolo (Italy), and in 2020 the Association proposed the new streaming-project called “Spazio1984 - a Streaming Apology for a Digital Underground”.

Our Association, Metamorfosi Notturne, is one of the winning associations to the call of Unione Buddhista Italiana, which decided to allocate more than 1 million euros to support the cultural realities hit by Covid-19 emergency.
We thank the Unione for having chosen us among the many partecipants. Thank to this precious help, it has been possible to guarantee the regoular functioning of Metamorfosi Notturne and to support some new initiative such as the streaming virtual Spazio1984, in collaboration with La Terra Galleggiante Association and the Teatro del Lavoro of Pinerolo, which will involve between July and September, 30 people between artists and technicians. An important opportunity in such hard times.