Paolo Longo (born October 30, 1967, in Trieste, Italy) is an Italian composer and conductor.
He studied composition, piano and conducting in Trieste, where he graduated in 1990 with highest honors. In 1998 he moved to France, where he lived until 2007.
His works (mainly chamber, vocal and piano music) have been awarded in several International Competitions; he received First Prize in the Edvard Grieg Memorial Competition in Oslo in 2003, the ADNM Competition in Tarragona and the Ivan Spassov competition in Plovdiv in 2004, the Tokyo chamber music competition and the Renée B. Fisher Composer Awards in New Haven in 2005, the Onde Musicali competition in Taranto, the ISCM-Miami competition and the competition of the Académie Internationale de Lutèce in Paris in 2006. He has also earned second prizes and special mentions in Rome (Premio Valentino Bucchi), Piacenza (Egidio Carella Competition), Geneva (Prix Reine Marie José), Urbana-Champaign (Salvatore Martirano Memorial Composition Award), Angoulême, Cuneo, Auckland and many others.
His compositions (based on diverse processes as cellular proliferation and spectral synthesis) have been performed in festivals and in concert seasons in Europe, in the United States, in Japan and in New Zealand; they have been broadcast by radios and TV channels. His first stage work, Le Songe d'un habitant du Mogol (text by Jean de la Fontaine, derived from a story in the Gulistan of Sa'di), commissioned by the Atelier Lyrique de Tourcoing, has been premiered in Lille (“Festival Lille 3000”) in 2007.Most of his works are published by Symétrie (Lyon, France).
As a conductor, he works especially into contemporary music; he premiered works by composers such as Bruno Bettinelli, Aldo Clementi, Azio Corghi, Pascal Dusapin, Michaël Levinas, Giacomo Manzoni, Ennio Morricone, Francesco Pennisi and many others. In 1996 he co-founded (with the composer Stefano Procaccioli) the Taukayensemble, with which he has commissioned numerous works, and has since served as its principal conductor and music director.