Egisto Macchi

Egisto Macchi (4 August 1938 – 8 August 1992) was an Italian composer.

Born in Grosseto, Macchi moved to Rome to study composition, piano, violin and singing with Roman Vlad (1946–51) and Hermann Scherchen (1949–54), among others. It was around this period that he also studied literature and human physiology at La Sapienza University.

From the late fifties, he began his collaboration with a group of musicians (Franco Evangelisti, Domenico Guaccero and Daniele Paris), to whom he was bound by intense friendship. Together with Domenico Guaccero, Daniele Paris and Antonino Titone, he was one of the editors of the magazine Orders, which first appeared in 1959. With Bertoncini, Bortolotti, Clementi, De Blasio, Evangelisti, Guaccero, Paris, Pennisi, and Franco Norris, he founded the Association of New Consonance in 1960. He made a frequent hand at directing the association, and he held the office of President from 1980 to 1982, and also in 1989.

From the day of its conception, he followed the activity of the International Week of New Music in Palermo. After creating the Musical Theatre of Rome with Guaccero, he founded Studio R7, an experimental, electronic music laboratory born in 1967. It is in the same year that he joined Franco Evangelisti's Gruppo di Improvvisazione di Nuova Consonanza, an avant garde improvisation group that also recruited Macchi's close friend and collaborator Ennio Morricone.

In 1978, he was part of the Italian commission for the music of UNICEF, together with Luis Bacalov, Franco Evangelisti, Ennio Morricone and Nino Rota.

In 1983, he created, together with Guaccero, the Institute of Voice, seeking to deal with problems related to vocal work in the field of classical music and folk music of all continents. The institute made use of new technologies in the field of electronics and cybernetics. He took over the direction of the institute after the death of his friend in 1984.