First Europe’s Artistic Team: Alice Norma Lombardi, Patryk ‘TikTak’ Matela, Azzurra De Gregorio, Bojan Milinkovic, Francesco Venturi, Thea Soti, Balázs Várnai, and Marko Dulić
Alice Norma Lombardi is a singer, born in 1991 in Conegliano(TV). She obtained a bachelor degree in opera singing in 2015 at the Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali “Vecchi-Tonelli” of Modena under the guidance of Marina Comparato, William Matteuzzi, and then continued her studies with Donatella Debolini in Florence. She deepens her studies in Renaissance polyphony and Baroque repertoire and then devotes herself to vocal research, especially in the context of contemporary music, with an eye open to any other genre of music. As a soloist and in ensemble she sang for various national Baroque and contemporary music festivals, she has collaborated with ancient and contemporary music ensembles, with Australian composer Anthony Pateras, with composer Maria W Horn, with guitarist and composer Stefano Pilia among others.
Patryk ‘TikTak’ Matela got interested in human beatbox before even knowing its name, but started working on it seriously since 2002. Since that time he’s been publishing at ZegarTikTaka.pl, the first and largest Polish beatboxing website, visited by over 600,000 people worldwide. He’s having regular beatbox and vocal workshops, judging battles all over Poland, organizing beatboxing events in clubs and in the Warsaw Subway. He also beatboxed for charity, having workshops in a youth correctional facilities, dangerous neighbourhoods and foster homes. Having worked and performed with contemporary composers and artists, TikTak knows how to use musical notation (although not reading notes a vista) and has experience using contemporary graphic notation.
Azzurra De Gregorio is a visual artist and theatre director, who experiments a hybrid and nomadic artistic path that bases its expressive code on the absence of definitions. Her work, in addition to investigating the relationship between the actor / performer and the public, explores the bonds that connect theatre, performance and visual art. Her research, characterized by constant references to ancient painting, symbolism, mythology and sacred art, aims to create immersive and evocative experiences that arise from the combination and interaction of music, scenes, gestures, lights, movements, costumes and new technologies. If you want to know more about Azzurra’s works, visit her website: http://www.azzurradegregorio.it/
“My name is Bojan Milinkovic and I come from Novi Sad, Serbia. I graduated from the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad, majoring in ethnomusicology. Besides ethnomusicology, I am involved in arranging and composing music, as well as teaching. As a multi-instrumentalist, I also dedicate a lot of time to live performance. Currently, I am employed as the conductor of the Grand Folk Orchestra at Radio-Television of Vojvodina.”
Francesco Venturi is an Italian composer, voice artist, and researcher. He develops voice-based interdisciplinary projects in the live arts, collaborating with public and private institutions internationally and intersectionally. PhD candidate at Kingston University London, his work has received major commissions and awards, and he has performed across Europe since 2014.
Thea Soti is a SHAPE+ electronic musician, composer and experimental vocalist, who explores virtual and posthuman identities projected through vocal qualities in digital environments. Her main goal is to recontextualize the human voice and challenge the preconceptions attached to it by pushing the boundaries of what a human voice can sound like. Her first solo album ØVER+ was released on the Parisian experimental label Planisphère.
Balázs Várnai was born in 1978 in Budapest. He was a member and soloist of the Hungarian Radio Children’s Choir. Later he studied composition and musicology in his hometown at the Ferenc Liszt Academy of Music, then drama and music theater directing at the Bavarian Theater Academy in Munich (graduating in 2007), and completed his MA degree in performing arts and physical theater at the Accademia Teatro Dimitri in Switzerland (2015). He worked as an assistant director at the Wuppertal Theater in Germany, and after his MA degree in Switzerland, he appeared as an actor and singer in independent theater productions. With his performance “The Book of Stolen Faces”, he visited festivals in Lithuania, Germany, Hungary, and Switzerland. He was a member of the “I divorati” company in Switzerland and directed the piece “Untouchables” with Hungarian Roma adolescents. He composed music for various puppet and dance theater shows, including “The Snowman”, “Kiss of the Stars”, “Carnival of the Animals” and “LAST” in Hungary and Poland. Since 2019 he has been working as a clown doctor at the organization Red Nose International in Budapest and Vienna. Last season he played in the performance “Ach Sisi – 99 Szenen” at the Volkstheater in Vienna. He currently lives and works in Vienna.
“Hello, my name is Marko Dulić, and I was born in Subotica, in the northern part of Serbia. Over the years I’ve been part of numerous local and international projects as a performer and composer. I used to play different types of tambura, and a few different traditional instruments, but my primary focus nowadays is contemporary classical composition. Currently I work as an assistant professor at the Preschool Teacher Training College in Novi Sad and I’m finishing my DMA at the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad.”