Biography
Romano Crivici is one of Australia’s few contemporary composer/performers (violin and piano). In pioneering the integration of technology, improvisation and cross-cultural collaborations within the classical tradition, he has created a genre unique to contemporary music making.
He has also worked to build musical and cultural bridges in Australia, and in subtle ways created dialogues that addressed some of the issues, past and present which his country faces. This has involved collaborating with artists from many cultures and performance styles, including long working relationships with Australian indigenous artists, Indian/Jazz fusion artists, Javanese percussionists and traditional Tibetan performers within the various multi-media formats he has devised.
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To these ends Crivici founded the Elektra String Quartet as a disciplined and flexible ensemble that could work within many cross cultural art-forms and give voice to his musical visions, as well as commission and perform works by various Australian composers. He balanced this with membership in the hard-to-categorise, outrageously creative and humorous improvising group, The Paranormal Music Society.
Since 2003 he has increasingly shifted his attention from performing with the Elektra String Quartet to composition, and, in a way that strangely parallels and deepens his creative process, is engaged in the study of anthropology at the University of Sydney. Reflecting the larger scale of the works he creates, Crivici has expanded the Inner Voices, (originally an offshoot of the quartet consisting of his brother Rudolf, himself and various guest artists) which, now comprised of both classical and jazz performers, he directs from the keyboard.
This is, in his own words, “to create not only something of beauty or soulfulness, but an attempt at finding or creating some meaning and relevance …… a living and ongoing sense of shared humanity, if not in the broader cultural milieu, then at least within my own head.”
“He has his own distinctive sound…Crivici’s music has its roots in pop, contemporary classical and native Australian sources…simple, haunting melodic patterns.” (Interstellar Song Cycle, Sydney Opera House, -Musical America, 2000)
Crivici, a former member of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, the New England String Quartet, and the Elektra String Quartet (violin and artistic director) has also worked widely as a pianist, repetiteur and conductor.
Biography text from Last.fm, available under CC BY-SA.