ITER Research Ensemble is a vocal and research group founded in September 2022 within the NPO “Coro Facoltà di Musicologia,” on the initiative of advanced students and alumni of the Department of Musicology and Cultural Heritage at the University of Pavia in Cremona (Italy). It is formed by young musicologists united by a clear goal: to do research on the music they sing, and to sing the music they do research on.
Through various projects conceived and led by its members, ITER Research Ensemble has collaborated with institutions in Italy and abroad, including the Enzo Hruby Foundation, the Confucius Institute of the University of Milan, Ekomuzej–Ecomuseo Batana, and the Centro Studi Luciano Berio. With the latter, ITER organized in the centenary of the composer’s birth the choral conducting and research workshop “Berio 2025.”
The ensemble has performed alongside various artists and groups, including Andrea Lucchesini, the vocal quartet Nuove Quattro Colonne, the SAC-KUD “Marco Garbin” Choir, and Ensemble Dongxun. Its collaboration with guitarist Nicolò Spera resulted in the group’s recording debut (Dynamic, 2024), dedicated to works by Margutti and Castelnuovo-Tedesco, and awarded the Chitarra d’Oro at the 30th International Classical Guitar Conference.
Balancing performance and scholarship, ITER members have participated in several national and international conferences, including the 7th Symposium of the ICTMD Study Group on Multipart Music (Cremona, Italy) and the 2025 PARL Next Generation Symposium “Overcoming Boundaries: A Dialogue Between Artistic and Scholarly Research” (Linz, Austria). In autumn 2024 the ensemble was hosted by the College of Music at the University of Colorado Boulder, where it held concerts, workshops, and colloquia.
Manifesto
ITER Research Ensemble is a study group and collaborative experience which aims to cultivate both musical and academic aptitudes, developing research and artistic projects that enhance the creativity and scientific skills of its members.
ITER is a “study collective” that promotes hybrid forms of research dissemination and artistic production, addressed to both physical and digital audiences through live performances, publications, scientific events and audiovisual content.
Alongside the more traditional modes of research production and dissemination, one of the group’s aims is to experiment with and promote new forms of narration, oriented towards transmediality and the encounter between various forms of expression.
Going beyond the opposing perspectives of practice-led research and research-led practice, ITER promotes a way of “knowing-from-the-inside” in which the modes of experience themselves become part of the research, and the roles of cantor and researcher merge into a single figure: an ever more contemporary and modern counterpart of the medieval musicus.
More on this on a recent article (in Italian only; apologies for that!) by our member Rebecca Favale, “Ricerca e pratica: due anime per un coro. L’esperienza di ITER Research Ensemble”, Choraliter 73 (2024): 34–36 (excerpt).