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MotoContrario is a composers and performers collective, based in Trento, which focuses its artistic interest on 20th century and contemporary music. The collective’s main activity intend to raise the interest in these literatures, giving a critical glance on canonical and official perspectives on new music and maintaining strong relationships and constant comparisons between artistic and research dimensions.
The collective aims to create workshops and open seminars on important and urgent issues about the nowadays cultural complexity. It is also interested in the perspectives that emerge form the relationship between music and art, science, technology, society and politics.

In 2014 MotoContrario has founded, and still realizes and organizes, the Festival Contrasti. The festival, through concerts and cultural meetings dedicated to new and 20th century music, was born with the intent to shed light on the many sides of the multifaceted contemporary musical reality, which is usually ignored or neglected. The principal purpose is to contribute to the expansion of the local cultural offer, in continuous and direct dialogue with other national and international musical and cultural institutions.
Among the several guests of the various editions of the Festival were prestigious ensembles and musicians such as Arsenale (Treviso), Interensemble (Padova), Collettivo 21 (Piacenza), Imago Sonora (Rome), Etymos (Lucca), Helmut Duo (La Spezia), Azione_Improvvisa, percussionist Guido Facchin, tenor Roberto Abbondanza etc.

The collective has created the MotoContrario ensemble, which includes the musicians participating in the project together with contributions from other artists and performers.
Since 2015, MotoContrario ensemble announces every year a Call for scores dedicated to composers without age or nationality limits, for which it receives scores of composers from all over the world. The selected scores are regularly included in the Festival Contrasti program and are always performed by MotoContrario ensemble.

Various collaborations have been activated with other associations and cultural institutions, such as Castello del Buonconsiglio, Center Laurence Feininger  (Association for music research), Anterem, (literary research magazine), Pergine Spettacolo Aperto, Association Cluster (Lucca), the Conservatories of Trento, Udine, La Spezia etc.
The collective’s artistic projects have been also realized through sound installations, interactive improvisations and musical flash-mobs.