Bio

Alessandro Perini is a composer and sound artist whose practice investigates the relationships between body, space, and sound through the design and construction of custom-built musical instruments, electroacoustic devices, and sound machines that challenge conventional modes of performance and listening.

He studied Composition (with Luca Francesconi and Ivan Fedele among others), Electronic Music, and Science of Musical Communication in Italy and Sweden, developing a hybrid background that combines compositional practice, acoustics, psychoacoustics, and technological research. This interdisciplinary training continues to inform a practice in which composition is inseparable from material processes, mechanical structures, vibration, and the direct physical interaction between performer, instrument, and sonic space.

Perini’s practice is grounded in the concept of the expanded body, understood as the extension of both the performer’s body and the instrumental body through external apparatuses. These extensions may take the form of electromechanical systems, custom-built machines, or 3D-printed prosthetic devices that alter an instrument’s organology, modes of sound production, or patterns of physical interaction. Rather than functioning as auxiliary technologies, these elements reconfigure the relationship between performer and instrument, generating new performative conditions and hybrid bodies, or producing a deliberate discrepancy between what is visually perceived by the audience and the resulting sonic outcome.

His music and sound works have been presented internationally at festivals and institutions including the Biennale di Venezia, Milano Musica, Nordic Music Days, MATA Festival (New York), KLANG (Copenhagen), and Music Current (Dublin). His work has also been documented through a portrait CD, The Expanded Body, released by KAIROS.

Perini’s artistic research has developed through a series of international residencies and research contexts, including the I-Park Foundation (Connecticut), Fondazione Spinola Banna per l’Arte (Italy), BIOART Society in Finnish Lapland, AIRY sound art (Sweden), and Polytempo (Zurich).

Alongside his artistic activity, Perini has been teaching composition, electronic music, and audiovisual practices in academic institutions, conservatories, and workshop settings across Europe and South America.

He is a founding member of Hertzbreakerz, a Malmö-based curatorial collective devoted to the diffusion of new art music. He also curates the academic programme of the Intonal Festival in Malmö, with a focus on acousmatic music, sound spatialisation, and acousmonium practices.

Perini currently lives and works between Italy and Sweden.

[last updated January 2026]
Photo © Michela Benaglia
Photo © Michela Benaglia

Curriculum studiorum:

  • BA in Science and Technology of Musical Communication (Università Statale di Milano, 2006)
  • BA in Electronic Music and Technologies of Sound (Conservatorio di Musica di Como, 2007)
  • BA in Composition (Conservatorio di Musica di Como, 2009)
  • MA in Composition (Conservatorio di Musica di Como, 2011)
  • MA II in Composition (Music Academy of Malmö, 2013)