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The Italian-born conductor and pianist, Lorenzo Marasso, started playing the piano at the age of 5. His main teachers have been Ilonka Deckers and Domenico Canina, under whose tutelage he graduated from the Conservatorio di Milano in 1994 with Diploma di Pianoforte (1988-2004). He further studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London with Professor Frank Wibaut (1994-1996), where he also performed and collaborated regularly with the instrumental faculty. At the RAM, he also studied conducting with Colin Metters and Denise Ham. He also studied Architecture at the Politecnico Di Torino (1999-2004), and obtained his Masters degree in Architecture from Yale University (2006).
Lorenzo Marasso is an impassioned and sympathetic conductor, concert pianist, chamber musician, educator and radio host. Dubbed, by Mexican-American pianist, Ana Cervantes, the “king of repertoire”, his creative and intrepid programming spans centuries and continents, often revealing lesser known masterpieces and rarely performed arrangements. His performances have been broadcast in numerous media outlets, including Seattle’s 98.1 Classical King FM and NPR.
From 2012 to 2016 Lorenzo Marasso, while in Los Angeles, was Music Director of String Orchestra Project (= SOP), an ensemble devoted to performing the chamber orchestral repertoire with no boundaries of styles or combination of players. Under his baton and artistic directorship, the group has presented a regular season of concerts featuring repertoire spanning from J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart to Paul Hindemith and S. Reich. In 2015, SOP was invited to accompany the winners of the Derek Jones Piano Competition in a gala concert, which Lorenzo conducted, at Thayer Hall in Downtown Los Angeles. In 2021 Lorenzo founded the Seattle Chamber Orchestra and is serving now as the ensemble’s Music Director. In the same year he also started hosting a weekly radio program called Dress Rehearsal on 107.3FM KBFG Seattle.
Equally inspired by contemporary music, Lorenzo Marasso has commissioned and performed world premieres of new works by several international composers who have written and dedicated pieces to him. His on-going collaboration with Los Angeles-based composer, Anne LeBaron, whose pieces for “speaking pianist” offer a new way of interaction between performance and acting, led him to commission the writing of a new piece titled Partizan, as part of her projected series The Well-Read Clavier, using fictional texts by Italian novelist Beppe Fenoglio, which was premiered at the Alba Music Festival in Italy, in 2018. In July 2020 he completed the Invention Project, a commission of new pieces for piano inspired by J.S. Bach's Inventions and Sinfonias.
Lorenzo Marasso released his fourth album with independent record label Bauhaus Records in 2019. Titled "Abenteuer", the album captures enchanting performances of works by J.S. Bach and his son Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, Alban Berg, Joseph Haydn and Franz Liszt. In 2018, Lorenzo recorded a solo piano arrangement of Joseph Haydn’s full orchestral work The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross and accompany the CD are commissioned artistic sketches by Italian artist and architect Massimo Scolari interpreting the piece. His other recordings include Works for Two Pianos by J.S. Bach and W.A. Mozart and Inventions and Sinfonias by J.S. Bach.
Lorenzo Marasso currently lives in Seattle, Washington, where he enjoys teaching in his own piano studio as well as entertain collaborations with the Music Schools at the University of Washington and Seattle University. |
