Emilio Pomarico has gained renown both as a composer and conductor specializing in contemporary music. He has conducted the world premieres of works by many major contemporary composers.
Pomarico was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on June 17, 1953. He moved to Italy for studies in composition at the Milan Conservatory, working there with Renato Donisi. At the conservatory, his compositions won awards in the Viotti di Vercelli Competition.
Pomarico also took conducting lessons in Italy with
Franco Ferrara and in Germany with
Sergiu Celibidache. Over the next years,
Pomarico remained in Italy, although he has returned to Argentina for performances. He conducted most of Italy's major orchestras as well as several around Europe, including the
WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln,
Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio France, and the
BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. His compositions were performed at such contemporary music venues as Contretemps (Geneva, Switzerland), Musik der Zeit (Cologne), and Wien Modern (Vienna). His In Nomine was recorded by
Ensemble Recherche in 2005 for the Kairos label.
Pomarico has conducted music by the biggest names in contemporary music, including
Luciano Berio,
Pierre Boulez, and
Elliott Carter. He has given world premieres of works by
Brian Ferneyhough (the Carceri cycle, 1996),
Luigi Nono (Caminantes, 1999), and
Georg Friedrich Haas (Melancholia at the Opera Garnier in Paris in 2008). In the later part of his career, he has been associated with composer
Georges Aperghis, giving premieres of many of his works, including Migrants, with
Ensemble Resonanz at the MaerzMusic Festival in Berlin in 2018. In 2017 and 2018,
Pomarico served as the conductor-in-residence with that ensemble.
Beginning in 2001 with a recording of Emmanuel Nunes' Quodlibet with
Ensemble Modern and the
Gulbenkian Orchestra of Lisbon for Naïve,
Pomarico has been a frequent presence on labels devoted to contemporary music, including Kairos, NEOS, and Wergo. In 2013, he led a recording of Morton Feldman's Violin and Orchestra with
Carolin Widmann and the
Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra on
ECM. He took up
Feldman once again in 2020, appearing on an album of that
composer's works released on the Capriccio label by the
ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra.