Pedro Memelsdorff

Background

About Pedro Memelsdorff

A music director, a recorder player and a musicologist, Pedro Memelsdorff was born in Argentina and has been living in Europe since 1977. He graduated from the Schola Cantorum in Basle, from the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam, and obtained a Ph.D. in Musicology from Utrecht University. As a musician, he has been a member of Jordi Savall’s Hesperion XXI since 1981 and of a duo with Andreas Staier since 1984. In 1987 he founded—and still directs—the ensemble Mala Punica. As a musicologist, Memelsdorff is invited at conferences and publishes in the specialized press. He has been a Fellow of Villa I Tatti, where he was inveited as a Visiting Professor in Jan-Jun 2020, and is an Affiliate Researcher at the Utrecht University, at the Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance (CESR) de l'Université de Tours and a member of a Study Group of the International Musicological Society. He was tenured Professor of Music at the Conservatory of Zurich and the Civica Scuola di Musica of Milan and guest professor in the Universities of Saarland, Salamanca, Tokyo, Rome II, the City University of N.Y, the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, the University of N.C. at Chapel Hill, and in numerous Conservatories in Western Europe, Japan, Israel and USA. He is tenured professor at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya in Barcelona. In 2010 he was Ernest-Bloch lecturer at University of California Berkeley and in December 2010 he was shortlisted for a position of full professorship in Historical musicology at Harvard University. Since 2006 he is the Director of the Early Music Seminars at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice, and since May 2017 the Artistic planner for musical events at Villa I Tatti, The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. In 2013-15 he has served as director of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis and in 2016-18 as the Artistic director of the music festival Festtage Alte Musik Basel.