ABOUT

"Francesca Guccione's Muqataea is out now on Whales Records. On it, the Sicilian-born violinist and composer presents a deeply personal vision of chamber music. When she blends electronics with the familiar sounds of acoustic instruments, it's not so much to create contrasts as to complement their emotional resonance. And when she builds her pieces on gentle ostinatos  and circling violin patterns, the aim is not to create rhythmical propulsion, but to suspend movement: The point of the loop is to make itself disappear. We recognise these techniques as contemporary, but what makes them sound so fresh and engaging is precisely that they rekindle a seemingly lost spark: When, in the 19th century, the romantic movement emerged, audiences became smaller, withdrawing into the privacy of the salon, where performances took on an unprecedented sense of intimacy. But the inward journeys they took the listener on became ever more expansive and vivid, tending towards the state of lucid dreaming. This is the era that Guccione's approach is reviving, these are the emotional landscapes that Muqataea is transporting you to." - 15 Questions



"From the very opening lines of slowly building recurring string progressions, complemented by deeper atmospheric treatments and triumphant piano notes, it is impossible not to compare this music to that of the dearly missed Jóhann Jóhannsson." - Headphone Commute





Francesca Guccione is an Italian composer and violinist.

Fascinated from the very beginning by the relation between sound and image, she combined her violin studies with those in composition and film scoring, earning a Master's Degree in this discipline with the highest grades.

Her love for travelling lead her to perform in many cities around the world, including New York, Toronto, Dublin and Alexandria of Egypt.

In 2021 she released for the French label Whales Records, her first album of neoclassical music, “Muqataea”, featuring the famous cellist and composer Giovanni Sollima as the artistic director of the project; afterwards, several international artists, including Robot Koch, Julien Marchal, Hélène Vogelsinger and Throwing Snow made several reworks of some of the tracks on this album. Also for Whales Records, in 2022 she released the EP “Utopia Aerial View”, produced in collaboration with Moog Music. In addition to Whales Records she also collaborates with other record labels, including the Canadian Enjou Music, for which she released three singles, the French InFiné Music, for which she released a rework of the track “Hysope” by Arandel, and the German labels Modularfield and 7K! Records with which she released the single "Mare Tranquillitatis" included in the collection "String Layers Vol. II". In September 2024 she released her second album, "The Geometry of Time," for the Berlin-based record label Neue Meister. The album was preceded by two arrangements for strings and analog synthesizers of two tracks by the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson.

On invitation from Moog Music she performed at Superbooth 22 in Berlin, where she presented an original composition for violin and analog synthesizers; this experience lead to a collaboration that continues to this day.

In 2023 she collaborated on the soundtrack of the film "Lubo," by Italian director Giorgio Diritti, which features Franz Rogowski as the lead actor. The film competed at the 80th Venice Film Festival being highly praised by the jury. She also collaborated on the soundtrack for the Finnish film "Death Is a Problem for the Living", which was presented in competition at the Rome Film Festival 2023.

She’s s currently a researcher at the Francesco Venezze Conservatory of Rovigo, where she’s researching the life and musical production of Jóhann Jóhannsson.

Her creativity is poetic and suspended between reality and imagination; a gateway to hidden worlds.