FEDERICA RIGHINI

BIOGRAPHY

Federica Righiniis a pianist, teacher and researcher and is regarded as a leading figure in the field of Performance Science in Italy.

Initially focused on the physiology of piano technique, she has progressively expanded her research to include the bodily, emotional and creative aspects of musical practice and performance. Her work addresses musicians of all backgrounds and aims to help them overcome difficulties such as technical and postural imbalances, performance anxiety, concentration problems and emotional management.

To date, she has delivered several thousand hours of training to instrumentalists, singers, choral and orchestral conductors, as well as jazz and pop musicians, through both group courses and individual coaching programmes.

Since 1995 she has shared her research with pianist Riccardo Zadra. Together they published Maestro di te stesso. A guide to the musician’s artistic and personal development (Edizioni Curci, 2010; currently available in Italian only), which remains a unique and widely recognised reference publication in Italy in this field.

She is Professor of Piano, Performance Science, and Body Awareness and Expressive Techniques at the Conservatory of Vicenza, and regularly gives masterclasses and seminars at conservatories, schools, academies and musical institutions. She also teaches professional development courses for secondary school teachers.

Federica Righini has extensive experience in the field of human potential development and in major body-awareness approaches (including Mental Dynamics, Postural Integration, Natural Breathing Techniques, Feldenkrais Method and Bioenergetics), which she applies directly to musical interpretation and pedagogy.</br/
She holds a Master and Master Practitioner certification in Neuro-Linguistic Programming, accredited by the Richard Bandler NLP Society, and has attended advanced training courses with Richard Bandler and Tony Robbins. She regularly collaborates in Europe and the United States as a certified teacher of the Avatar® course, a programme focused on the creative mechanisms of consciousness.

Federica Righini began her musical studies at the age of four and started performing publicly at the age of five. She graduated with highest honours from the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Turin and has given recitals throughout Italy and Europe, also appearing as a soloist with several symphony and chamber orchestras.
She studied for several years at the École Internationale de Piano in Lausanne with Fausto Zadra, later becoming his assistant and teaching advanced students from various European countries and different pianistic traditions.

She has an extensive career as a chamber musician in a wide variety of ensembles, collaborating with many distinguished Italian and international performers. From 1993 to 1997 she served as accompanist at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.

She performs regularly as a piano duo with Riccardo Zadra. A CD recorded on a historical Streicher piano, devoted to Johannes Brahms’s original four-hand piano transcriptions of his string quintets, is scheduled for release in June 2026 by Da Vinci Publishing.