His musical activity starts at the age of 18 with free improvisation experiences as double-bass player and immediately after with tape music. By chance he meets Germano Celant and attends his History of Modern and Contemporary Art lessons. This begins his important experience with visual arts, because from 1974 to 1980 he is young assistant of Ida Gianelli for her Samangallery, working with artists such as Joseph Beuys, Alighiero Boetti, Daniel Buren, Rebecca Horn, Sol Lewitt, Maria Nordman, Claes Oldenburg, Giulio Paolini, Giuseppe Penone, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Jack Smith, Lawrence Weiner. In 1977 he decides to study electronic music with Albert Mayr at the Firenze Music Conservatory, where he is introduced to Computer Music by Pietro Grossi at the Divisione Musicologica del CNUCE at the Pisa University. In 1979 he moves to Venezia where he gets a degree in Electronic Music with Alvise Vidolin at the local Music Conservatory. From then on he has been working as a composer and researcher in the field of musical perception at the Centro di Sonologia Computazionale, University of Padova where he has held many summer workshops. From 1983 to 1993 he was a staff member of L.I.M.B. (Laboratorio permanente per l’Informatica Musicale della Biennale di Venezia), editing its publications and involved in the realization of several projects, notably the exhibition “Nuova Atlantide. Il continente della musica elettronica” with Alvise Vidolin. From 1988 to 1993 he teaches Musical Informatics at the School of Musicology and Pedagogy of Macerata University in Fermo, and from 1996 to 1998 at the “Jornadas de Musica Electroacustica” on behalf of the Istituto Italiano di Cultura in Cordoba and Buenos Aires. In 2010 he is supervisor for the International Summer School in Systematic Musicology at Jyväskylä University (Finland). From 2005 to 2017 he is Professor of Electronic Music at the Conservatory “Niccolò Paganini” in Genova. Amongst the many projects he realized with his students: Der Klang der Südens Un viaggio attraverso suoni, parole, musica (three Hörspiele with Goethe Institut, Miso Music Portugal, Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya, 2010-11), Galata Electroacoustic Orchestra (GEO) (coordinator of the Lifelong Learning Programme IP, with Istanbul Bilgi Üniversitesi, Istanbul Teknik Üniversitesi, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Conservatorio di Musica “G. Pierluigi Da Palestrina”, 2013). GEO was conducted by him and Tolga Tüzün for the concert Compasso da navegare at La Biennale di Venezia Music Festival in 2014 and received a 34th “Franco Abbiati” Italian Musical Critics Award. His teaching career ends in 2020 at the Conservatory “Giuseppe Nicolini” in Piacenza.
Since its foundation to 2000 he has been member of the GATM, Analysis and Musical Theory Group scientific committee. Analysis of historical pieces as well of his own compositions have been published on Perspectives of New Music, Interface, Sonus, Quaderni di M/R, Musica/Tecnologia, and in books by Laterza, ERI-La Biennale di Venezia, Mimesis.
His compositions won him international acknowledgements, starting with the selection at the Opera Prima (Teatro La Fenice, Venezia 1981) for Gioco di velocità, synthetic sounds, recorded on Edipan LP. In 1992 writes Donna che si copre le orecchie per proteggersi dal rumore del tuono, a work for flute and synthetic sounds commissioned by Spaziomusica and recorded by Roberto Fabbriciani on Edipan CD, for which he receives an honourable mention at the Ars Electronica Prix, Linz. On the occasion of the XLVI International Festival of Contemporary Music (1995) La Biennale di Venezia commissions him a work for voice and electronics L’olio con cui si condiscono le parole, performed by Marianne Pousseur. In 1997 he is invited by the Centre de Recherches et de Formation Musicales de Wallonie in Liège to compose the Felix Regula series (I-V) for violin/viola, flutes, clarinets, 8 track tape and live electronics, performed at the Festival Ars Musica in Bruxelles (version IV is on Cybele DEGEM cd7). During a residence at the Fondazione Bogliasco in 1999 he writes bastone armonico a work for violin, rainsticks and interactive system, performed by Marco Rogliano and Alvise Vidolin at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova.In 2001 he is fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio to write L’apparizione di tre rughe for guitars, electronics and EyesWeb – audiovisual interactive system – recorded by Elena Casoli for Stradivarius Records. In 2002 Teatro La Fenice in Venezia put on “Per voce preparata”, a stage play with works for a female voice (Anna Clementi), video and electronics with his Allegoria dell’opinione verbale for an actress (Francesca Faiella), electronics and EyesWeb based on Gianni Revello texts. In 2005 he receives a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony where he realizes the music part for Un avatar del diavolo, a La Biennale di Venezia commission for a musical theatre work based on Antonin Artaud text for the 2005 International Festival of Contemporary Music. In 2007 he composes the live electronicspiece Accidenti agli armonici! Omaggio a BP commissioned by “Musiques & Recherches” (Bruxelles) for Bernard Parmegiani 80th birthday. In 2008 he is composer in residence at Kulturhuset USF in Bergen (Norway) where he realizes Stecche for piano, hyperviolin and live electronics. His videomusic production includes Sindrome scamosciata, video and live electronics (2008-2009), La scala non procede oltre (2009), Noli me tangere (2010). Since 2013 produces audiovisual works on the aesthetics of food such as Seppie senz’osso (video: Paolo Pachini), Il suono bianco (video: Maurizio Goina), Il suono rosso (video: Ivan Penov). In 2020 he started to work on electronic pieces inspired by piano pieces of the Fifties: Karlheinz Stockausen’s Klavierstücke (Studi I-VIII, 2020-2021) and John Cage’s Music of Changes (Teoria e pratica del cambiamento, 2022).