David Monacchi

Monacchi is internationally recognized for his pioneering work with nonprofit organizations, such as Greenpeace, the World Wildlife Foundation (WWF), and Ear to the Earth, to capture and preserve the unique sonic heritage of the world’s rapidly vanishing, last remaining areas of undisturbed primary equatorial rainforest; his many thousands of hours of field work dedicated to the creation and development of a growing sound bank of these remote ecosystems, which provides raw data for the scientific analysis and study of the world’s most critically endangered biodiversity hotspots; and for raising public awareness and fostering discourse on the biodiversity crisis through his musical compositions and immersive sound installations.

Now, nearly 15 years later, Monacchi’s Fragments of Extinction is its own independent nonprofit organization, dedicated to conducting field research in the world’s last remaining areas of undisturbed primary equatorial rainforest, and a member of ECSITE (the European Network of Science Museums).

Honors include the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs ‘Erato Farnesina’ fellowship for the World Soundscape Project at SFU (Canada, 1998), and international prizes at the Russolo-Pratella Competition (Italy, 1996), the Locarno Film Festival (Switzerland, 1996), and the Multiple Sound Festival (Netherlands, 1993). His music was also twice recognized at the Bourges International Grand Prix of Electroacoustic Music (France, 2007 and 2008), and at the Premio Giovannini for Innovation (Italy, 2013).

The recipient of multiple awards throughout Europe and North America, Monacchi is a member of the international networks Ear to the Earth, the World Forum for Acoustic Ecology, a founding member of the Global Sustainable Soundscape Network, and a board member of the International Society of Ecoacoustics. A Fulbright fellow at UC Berkeley in 2007, he has taught at the University of Macerata since 2000 and is now professor of Electroacoustics at the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" in Pesaro.

Over the past 25 years (since 1990), composer David Monacchi has conducted field recordings throughout Europe, Africa, Southeast Asia, North and South America. During a 2002 pilot project in the Brazilian Amazon conducted in collaboration with Greenpeace, Monacchi collected his first high-definition ‘sound portraits’ of an intact tropical ecosystem. With these unique recordings, he composed the eco-acoustic opera Fragments of a Sonic World in Extinction, which toured theatres and contemporary music venues across Europe and the United States.