Giovanna Sevi
Violinist

Giovanna Sevi was born in 1999 in Foggia, southern Italy. In July 2020, Giovanna obtained a Master's degree in Violin. She continued her studies at the Koninklijk Conservatorium in Gent, the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome and the IESM in Aix-en-Provence, where she is currently perfecting her skills with Maestro Olivier Charlier.
In October 2021, as violinist with the Trio Manfredi, Giovanna recorded the album "Musique au bord de la rivière" for the Da Vinci Classics label, featuring works by Stravinsky, Milhaud, Khatchatourian and Menotti. Thanks to her interest in contemporary music, Giovanna has worked with composers Eric Tanguy, Michel Petrossian, Malika Kishino, Dieter Mack and with the ensembles L'Itinéraire, Studio Musikfabrik, Musiques Présentes. She has also appeared as soloist at the Easter Festival in Aix-en-Provence, the Festival des Écrivains du Sud, the Festival Messiaen au Pays de la Meije and the Salle Musicatreize in Marseille.
Giovanna plays on an 1876 Gand et Bernardel violin, recently on loan from the Talents & Violon'celles Foundation in Paris.

Marco Stroppa
Composer, researcher and educator

Marco Stroppa (Verona, 1959) studied music in Italy (piano, choral music and conducting, composition and electronic music) and continued his studies (1984-86) at MIT's Media Laboratory (computer science, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence). Between 1980 and 1984, he worked at the Center for Computational Sonology in Padua, where he wrote "Traiettoria", a work that immediately met with considerable success and continues to be performed regularly.
In 1982, Pierre Boulez invited him to join Ircam (Paris). His uninterrupted association with this institution has been crucial to his musical and scientific growth.
A highly respected pedagogue, Stroppa founded the composition and computer music course at the Bartók Festival (Szombathely, Hungary), where he taught for 13 years. After teaching composition at the CNSMDP, he was appointed professor of composition and computer music at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Stuttgart, where he succeeded Helmut Lachenmann.
His first opera "Re Orso", based on a text by Arrigo Boito, premiered to great acclaim in May 2012 at the Opéra Comique (Paris).
In 2019, the German magazine Musik-Konzepte has dedicated its volume "n. 186" to him. In 2019-2020, Stroppa was a member of Berlin's prestigious Institute for Advanced Studies (Wissenschaftskolleg).

Joël Versavaud
Saxophonist

Joël Versavaud was born in Creuse and has lived in Marseille since 2002. For some thirty years, he has experimented with and shared all the possibilities of the saxophone family: teaching at the Pierre Barbizet Conservatory in Marseille, creating in collaboration with over eighty composers, some one hundred and sixty new works, from solo to orchestra, mainly with the Ensemble C Barré (dir. Sébastien Boin) associated with the GMEM (dir. Christian Sebille), Musicatreize (dir. Roland Hayrabédian), Télémaque (dir. Raoul Lay), the symphonic repertoire with the orchestras of Bordeaux, Marseille, Toulon..., the transcription of excerpts from suites, sonatas and partitas by Johann Sebastian Bach thanks to the mastery of continuous breath, jazz and improvisation (Occidentale de Fanfare, big-bands, various collectives). All this on record, on the radio and in concerts in over twenty countries. Since 2017, his mastery of the Armenian doudouk has enabled him to write eight works using this instrument.