Luca Lombardi was born in Rome in 1945. He studied at the Universities of Vienna and Rome, and graduated after presenting a thesis on Haans Eisler, which was published by Feltrinelli (Italy) in 1978. He went on to study composition under Armando Renzi, Roberto Lupi and Boris Porena, and graduated from the Gioachino Rossini Conservatory in Pesaro in 1970. From 1968 to 1972 Lombardi lived in Köln, Germany, where he studied under Bernd Alois Zimmermann and Vinko Globokar, and attended the Kölner Kurse für Neue Musik (1968-70), studying under Karlheinz Stockhausen, Henri Pousseur, Mauricio Kagel, Dieter Schnebel and Frederic Rzewski. In Köln he also studied electronic music under Herbert Eimert, and in Utrecht under Gottfried Michael Koenig. In 1973 he was Paul Dessau’s student at Berlin’s Meisterschüler.

Luca Lombardi has published over 180 compositions, which include four operas, three symphonies, a slew of orchestral and chamber pieces, as well as music for soloists. 
Ricordi has published several of Lombardi’s works, including the operas Faust. Un travestimento (Faust – A Disguise) (1986-1990), based on a play by Edoardo Sanguineti, Dmitri oder Der Künstler und die Macht (Dimitri, or the Artist and Power), libretto by Hans-Klaus Jungheinrich (1994-1999); III Sinfonia, for soprano, baritone, chorus and orchestra (1992); Infra – music for 11 performers (1997); and Vanitas? for soprano, contralto, tenor, bass and orchestra (1999).

Lombardi has worked with writers and poets such as Edoardo Sanguineti, Heiner Müller,Friedrich Christian Delius, Jean Portante, David Grossman and Michael Krüger.

Among musicians he has worked with: Giancarlo Cardini, Frederic Rzewski, Emmanuel Pahud, Zubin Mehta,Fabio Luisi, Gianandrea Noseda, Marco Angius, Elio (of the group Elio e le Storie Tese), Michael Boder, Markus Stenz, Enrique Mazzola, Roberto Prosseda, Roberto Fabbriciani, Mario Caroli, Ensemble Modern, Ensemble MusikFabrik, Quartetto Prometeo.

Lombardi has been the recipient of commissions from major music institutions in Italy and Europe, including IRCAM (Paris), WDR (Köln), Rikskonserter (Stockholm), RSO (Berlin), Musikbiennale (Berlin), RAI (Rome), Radio della Svizzera Italiana (Lugano, Switzerland), Theater Basel (Basel, Switzerlad), KölnMusik (Köln), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Gewandhaus (Leipzig, Germany), and Frankfurter Feste (Frankfurt, Germany), Teatro dell'Opera (Rome), Teatro alla Scala (Milan).

Among the awards Lombardi has received:  the 1993 SIAE Award for a Work of Musical Theater (for his opera Faust. Un travestimento) and the 2006 Goffredo Petrassi Award.

He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (Berlin), the Hanse Institute for Advanced Study (Delmenhorst), and guest lecturer at the Berliner Künstlerprogramm des DAAD (Berlin). He was awarded a 6-month sabbatical in Japan by the Japan Foundation.

Lombardi is also the author of articles and books, including Conversazioni con Petrassi (Suvini Zerboni, 1980) and Instrumentation in der Musik des 20. Jahrhunderts, a study of orchestration, which he co-wrote with Walter Gieseler and Rolf-Dieter Weyer (Celle, 1985). 
The periodical series on composers “Musik-Konzepte” devoted a special issue and supplement to him (Munich, 2014).

He is a member of Berlin’s Academy of Arts (where his private archive is housed), and Munich’s Academy of Fine Arts.
In 2015, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Joachim Gauck, awarded Luca Lombardi the Federal Cross of Merit.

Lombardi’s compositions have been published by Schirmer, Moeck, Suvini Zerboni, Ricordi (1985-2000) and Rai Com.

http://www.lucalombardi.net/home/en_US/