Lucia
Ronchetti

The Ars Ludi ensemble consist of three extraordinary percussionists, Gianluca Ruggeri, Antonio Caggiano and Rodolfo Rossi, who have been creating an exceptionally fertile artistic and human partnership for 30 years. They have been collaborating with the most renowned Italian composers to create a powerful new repertoire for percussions that combines instrumental virtuosity with theatrical performance, as well as instructing a new generation of percussionists active all over the world. Ideal interpreters of the new repertoire of this  instrumental theatre, Gianluca Ruggeri, Antonio Caggiano and Rodolfo Rossi are histrionic and charismatic musicians who transform every percussion piece into an event full of theatricality and communication, contributing to the creation of a new vision of contemporary musical productions where the most complex scores are presented with a capturing and communicative performative attitude.  The contemporary percussionist is a special kind of musician, his armoury of instruments has expanded with the evolution of a specific repertoire, including everyday objects, electric mechanisms, mechanical instruments and digital percussions. Percussionists have to learn different techniques and move nimbly in their set, which sometimes occupies an entire stage and represents an imaginary theatre put into action by the percussionist himself, as deus ex-machina, vocal operator, performer and demiurge. Ars Ludi interprets this new vision of the performer with passion, talent and extraordinary imagination.
As part of the Biennale Musica 2022, Ars Ludi will present a new interpretation of Jules Verne directed by Giorgio Battistelli at the Teatro La Fenice on 14 September 2022. Ars Ludi will also be present with several concerts and through its participation in the Biennale Musica College.
The Silver Lion Award ceremony will be held on 17 September 2022 in the Sala delle colonne at Ca' Giustinian. The ceremony will be followed by a conversation between the music historian and playwright Guido Barbieri and Ars Ludi.



ARS LUDI ENSEMBLE
Ars Ludi is a percussionist trio founded in 1987 and composed of Gianluca Ruggeri, Antonio Caggiano and Rodolfo Rossi. Since the beginning of their careers, the three performers have undertaken an artistic itinerary active on two interpretative dimensions. On the one hand, the proposal of the contemporary repertoire for percussion, realized with an international concert activity performing the most important and virtuosic works for percussion by John Cage, Mauricio Kagel, Iannis Xenakis, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Giorgio Battistelli, Louis Andriessen, Edgar Varese, Steve Reich, Giacinto Scelsi, Luciano Berio and Francesco Filidei, encouraging with commissions and first performances the compositional research of many young Italian authors. The activity of Ars Ludi is also characterised by the conception and production of multimedia musical theatre events, through the creative collaboration with the protagonists of different artistic tendencies, such as Florian Fricke of Popol Vuh, the realisation of the projects Land im Klang by Alvin Curran, Macchine Virtuose by Luigi Ceccarelli, Aphrodite by Giorgio Battistelli and Polaris by Lorenzo Pagliei. Active organisers of the Lo Scompiglio project, Ars Ludi experiments with percussive performance in natural environments and the connection between sound and environmental space in new interpretative forms of the percussion repertoire.




https://www.labiennale.org/en/news/2022-lion-awards-music