Manuel Zurria was born in Catania in 1962, and has lived in Rome since 1980. He has collaborated with some of the most important Italian composers among whom Francisco Pennisi, Adrian Guarnieri, Sylvano Bussotti, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Luca Francesconi and Salvatore Sciarrino. Recently he has collaborated with Arvo Pärt, Philip Glass, Terry Riley, Gavin Bryars, Giya Kancheli, Toshio Hosokawa, László Sáry, Alvin Curran and Frederic Rzewski. During the last 20 years he has stimulated an entire generation of composers to produce new works that expand instrumental and interpretative possibilities: more than one hundred new works have been created for this purpose from composers like Yan Maresz, James Saunders, Caspar Johannes Walter, Maurizio Pisati, Fausto Romitelli, Gabriele Manca, Mario Garuti, Stefano Gervasoni, Yi Xu, Emanuele Casale, Rytis Mazulis, Stefano Scodanibbio and many others. Strongly attracted to minimalism, in the first months of 2008 he published on the Die Schachtel label a triple cd entitled Repeat! that included original works and works transcribed for flute and electronics made in collaboration with the musicians Arvo Pärt, Alvin Lucier, Louis Andriessen, Tom Johnson and others. He has played at the Bienniale Musica of Venice; the Pacific Music Festival, Sapporo, Japan; the Strasbourg Music Festival; at the Beethovenhalle in Bonn; Settembre Musica in Turin; De Yisbreker, Amsterdam; IRCAM Agora Festival, Paris; at the Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow; the Festival d’Automne, Paris; the Rikskonserter, Stockholm; Akademie der Kunste, Berlin; Maerz Musik, Berlin; the Archipel Festival, Geneva; NUMUS, Aarhus; ULTIMA, Oslo; Ensem, Valencia; Vienna Modern; Jauna Muzika, Vilnius; and the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival. In 1990 he was among the founders of Alter Ego. His discography includes recordings for BMG-Ricordi, BMC, Capstone Records, EdiPan, Stradivarius, Die Schachtel, Megadisc and Touch. In 2009 Hungarian label, BMC, published Niagara with music of László Sáry realized on multitrace. In 2010 the Belgian label, Megadisc, published his cd Musica falsa, a monograph of the Lithuanian composer Rytis Mazulis, with music elaborated, edited and played over the extended period of nearly 3 years. In the same year Die Schachtel published Joy Flashings, an adventurous project which was the fruit of a collaboration with the American composer Philip Corner.
