Francesca Maria Villani, piano

Francesca Maria Villani was born in Manduria, in the south of Italy in 1999, and she started playing the piano when she was five. She graduated with full marks and honors from the Conservatoire “Nino Rota”, in Monopoli with Professor C. Gallo in 2018. She has played Schumann’s Konzerstuck op 92 and Beethoven’s Concerto n 2 op 19 with the Conservatoire’s orchestra. She was selected by the Conservatoire to play the Goldberg Variations at Radar Theater in Monopoli during a festival dedicated to Paola Bruni. She won several competitions and she attended a number of piano masterclass by maestros including Thiollier, Marvulli, Ferrati, Rivera, Delle Vigne, Nattkemper.

She won the first prize at London Grand Prize Virtuoso, and she was selected to play at the awards gala at Royal Albert Hall in December 2016. On top of this, she has played for many associations, such as the Reale Circolo dei Canottieri Tevere Remo, a famous club in Rome, gli incontri in S. Maria di Loreto (a church near Imperial Forums in Rome), il Bari Piano Festival and i Concerti dell’EurOrchestra in san Carlo in Bari, and gli Amici della Musica “Arcangelo Speranza”, the oldest music association in Taranto, a town in the south of Italy.

She participated at ‘ A due voci’ festival, a series of concerts in Como about music and philosophy promoted in the field of the Journée mondiale de la philosophie sponsored by UNESCO in November 2021 and on that occasion she gave a concert lesson on the Goldberg Variations and Berg Sonata op 1. Among other activities she attended the biennial course with A. Delle Vigne. She has a degree in Philosophy, and she graduated with a thesis investigating the relationship between female composers and philosophers. She is now attending a Master’s degree in Philosophy at University of Bari.