Marco Longhini is among Italy's prominent conductors in the early music field, specializing in the music of Gesualdo and Monteverdi. He is also a significant educator. Longhini was born in Verona and has spent most of his career there and in Milan. He attended the Milan Conservatory, completing a double degree in music (composition, choral music, and singing, but not initially conducting) and architecture; his thesis was about the relationship between architecture and musical performance. His introduction to conducting came about when a priest at his church placed an emergency request for him to conduct the church choir. "It didn’t take me long to realize that this was a highly complex art, demanding just as much study as learning an instrument," Longhini told interviewer Jeremy Siepmann. "Just because you know something about music, or can play an instrument, doesn’t mean you can conduct!" For a dozen years, he conducted the Polyphonic University Choir of Verona. Longhini became interested in the music of the 16th and 17th centuries, founding the ensemble, Delitiae Musicae, in 1992. This group, which remains active, was a small ensemble that performed the madrigals of Monteverdi and Gesualdo, as well as works by lesser-known and often unpublished 17th century Italian composers. Later, Longhini branched out into Baroque opera, oratorio, and other choral music, conducting major projects for Italy's RAI television network among other groups. Longhini's recording career has been especially vigorous. In the late 1990s, he led Delitiae Musicae in albums of music by Philippe Verdelot and Adriano Banchieri for the Stradivarius label, moving to Naxos in 2001 and releasing, with the same group, complete cycles of the madrigals of Gesualdo and Monteverdi. The latter cycle concluded in 2019 with a recording of Monteverdi's Book 9 madrigals, paired with the madrigal-like Scherzi Musicali. Longhini is the director of choral music at the Luca Marenzio Conservatory in Brescia, Italy. ~ James Manheim