Press Features | Composer Paola Prestini

September 7, 2015

National Sawdust Prepares for an Oct. 1 Opening

Paola Prestini, the creative and executive director of National Sawdust, stood in the space’s balcony one recent afternoon, looking over what would soon be a bustling concert hall. “The speakers just came in,” she said cheerfully, pointing at a rig hanging from the ceiling, still in its filmy protective covering.

The New York Times

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May 14, 2015

Music For Writers: Paola Prestini’s Songs From Another ‘Labyrinth’

I wanted to write these two large-scale, deeply virtuosic pieces for these two muses, but I hadn’t had a chance to create a large-scale work like that yet.

Thought Catalog

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April 28, 2015

Labyrinth Installation Concertos: Room No. 35

Classical music and technological innovation are seen by many as being, for the best part, mutually exclusive – something the Labyrinth Installation Concertos project, created by New York-based artist and composer Paola Prestini, aims to change.

Nowness

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April 2, 2015

LED Cello Lights Up The Stage

The cello, played well, is a soulful instrument. So human, so organic. The last thing you’d think a cello needs is high-tech enhancement. And yet, several years ago the visual artist Erika Harrsch began collaborating with cellist Maya Beiser and composer Paola Prestini on a new work.

WBUR Boston

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December 18, 2014

Music For Writers: The Tidal Grace In Paola Prestini’s ‘Oceanic Verses’

This idea of disparate energies colliding is very much a part of everything I do. I’m interested in energies and styles that don’t necessarily go together and weaving them into a tapestry that to me makes sense.

Thought Catalog

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December 10, 2014

Paola Prestini by Helga Davis

Composer, visionary, and mentor Paola Prestini not only fills all of the aforementioned roles but is also founder of her own production company, VisionIntoArt (VIA), which provides opportunities to young composers as well as established performers in the new music world.

BOMB Magazine

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September 8, 2014

Paola Prestini: Following Her Vision

Paola Prestini combines wild imagination and controlled practicality on an almost molecular level—it’s as if both are fused together in her DNA.

NewMusicBox

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February 9, 2014

Paola Prestini's 'Visionary' Playlist Spans Anna Clyne to John Zorn

It's been a busy season for composer Paola Prestini. She's the founder of VisionIntoArt, the interdisciplinary arts company behind the annual 21c Liederabend festival, the Colorado Project at MASS MoCA and dozens of multimedia collaborations including Prestini's own Oceanic Verses and music-theatre piece Aging Magician.

WQXR

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November 25, 2013

The Music of the Hubble Space Telescope

Above, there’s a shortened form from a new classical work, the improbably if appropriately named Hubble Cantata by Paola Prestini. The piece, which played on Saturday at the Brookyln Academy of Music’s celebration of "contemporary art song," celebrates the beauty of the space telescope’s imagery.

The Atlantic

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July 10, 2013

8 Strings, More Hands

Paola Prestini is probably best known as a composer, but her business card might more accurately read “human resources alchemist,” such is her gift for bringing together disparate artists, technicians and other creative professionals to produce cross-disciplinary works greater than the sum of their parts.

The New York Times

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June 27, 2012

The Mediterranean Sea, Singing Along in Italy

Paola Prestini has been at work on "Oceanic Verses," a multimedia folk opera, since Carnegie Hall commissioned part of it for a composers' and singers' workshop in 2009.

The New York Times

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June 25, 2012

Making Waves with a New 'Oceanic' Opera

Growing up in Naples, Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona, 36-year-old composer Paola Prestini was always conscious of borders and juxtaposed realities. "Bringing together disparate threads and making them equal–that's what drives me as an artist," she said.

The Wall Street Journal

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May 18, 2012

Opera in Multiple Media

Paola Prestini is working on a new opera. So naturally, she's got plenty of film to edit. The forward-thinking new music composer has long been fascinated with the collaborative possibilities found in working with multiple media.

The Berkshire Eagle

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December 15, 2007

Ear to Ear: Paola Prestini

Through her interdisciplinary performance collective VisionIntoArt, Paola Prestini creates what TimeOut New York calls "ingeniously staged concert pieces that gracefully walk the line between opera and performance art." The Italian-born, New York-based composer joins David Garland for a conversation about her music and current projects.

WNYC

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