Riccardo La Foresta

Sound artist / percussionist

Riccardo La Foresta is a percussionist, sound artist and curator from Modena (Italy) whose research of the last years wants to question the role of the drum as a percussive instrument. Resonances and vibrations generated treating the drum as an aerophone, create acoustic drones, ancestral melodies and complex beats that drastically distance the instrument from traditional drumming. The ongoing process of his research is focused on the development of a system called Drummophone. His performance blurs the lines between percussion music, sound art, improvisation, and drone music, revealing the acousmatic response of the architecture.

"La Foresta has pushed percussion music back into the realm of speculative improvisation"

Philip Clark, The Wire

In the past years La Foresta’s been intensely touring Europe playing experimental music, free jazz and composed music, collaborating with musicians such as Anthony Pateras, Chris Corsano, James Ginzburg, Stefano Pilia, Axel Dörner, Fis, Lê Quan Ninh, John Butcher, Massimo Pupillo, Ingar Zach, Mike Majkowski and many others.

He performed and presented sound installations in some of the most important festivals for avant-garde music including Unsound, CTM, Terraforma, Sonica, Skanu Mežs, OSA, Sacrum Profanum, Pochen Biennale, AngelicA Festival, Path Festival, NODE festival, Area Sismica, Centro d’Arte di Padova, Tempo Reale, Milano Musica, La Digestion, Musica Sanae, Parma Frontiere. He curates a residency program at Centro Musica in Modena and since 2017 he's an organizer of NODE festival.
Riccardo has been an artist of Shape Platform 2021.