Described as “the new voice of the clarinet” on the front page of De Klarinet Magazine, internationally recognized for his groundbreaking contributions to contemporary clarinet music, Luca starts his career at the young age of twelve debuting at one of the most established halls of his home town Naples and appears on television nationwide live aged twenty-one. Praised by the International Clarinet Association for “the full range of his abilities”, he receives a master’s degree from the Conservatoire of Salerno (Italy), is awarded the Fellow status at the Higher Education Academy (UK) and, according to the Clarinet & Saxophone Society of Great Britain, he has since “established himself as the friendly face of contemporary clarinet”.
As a composer, Luciano is not much interested in serialism (except for some very short passages of dodecaphonic technique here and there). His eclectic approach to music-making is inspired by the great musical figures of the past (who excelled as performers, improvisers, composers, conductors, educators, etc.) with a strong will to be a complete musician. Besides what he calls "performance pieces" (i.e. original material or arrangements he has written for his own performances) one can find several short compositions, highly condensed miniature pieces that range from more experimental and ground-breaking clarinet solo pieces informed by his research to more melodic music for clarinet and piano or other chamber ensembles (see his series of fragments or divertimenti). The influence of and his experience with popular music (including the folkloric music of his native land) can be noticed, above all jazz music, resulting in a style that alternates music full of energy (thanks to his harmonies and rhythms), sense of hunour and melancholy (see his sonatas for clarinet and piano). He has also written music for rarely used combinations of instruments, like clarinet and guitar quartet or music for clarinet, guitar and piano.
In terms of aesthetics, post-modernism is a good way to define most of his work. The "ironic re-elaboration" of the styles of the past is evident in music that is often characterised by a peculiar sense of humour and often uses the form of the musical parody, most of all the "window form", where the artist "opens" a new door on a different "world" as clearly evident on his two of his major works, the Sequenza #1 and #2 (among the very few pieces that last more than ten minutes) and some of his compositions for clarinet and piano. For this reason one can find the use of music quotations from major composers or folkloric tunes, but also the creation of new folk tunes as intended by Bartok. The use of the "alea" ("aleatoric music") is quite frequent in Luciano's music for he aims at making the poetic gesture and the reproduction of the composition coincide making the piece unique every time it is performed. In his specific case, we find passages of "real-time" composing or variations of an "incipit" (a short idea), impromptu cadenzas and passages that leave to performers the choice of the line they have to play. This also explains the use of the basso continuo he makes on compositions for clarinet and piano (in this case a modern way to execute it combining notation and chord symbols if needed), mainly on his sonatas in one movement in fact inspired by the "sonata a solo" of the barocco era (for violin and b.c.).
In terms of harmonies, Luciano uses dissonant chords not connected to each other using the criteria of functional harmony. Instead, one finds chromatic chords, polytonality, clusters, passing notes ascending or descending chromatically and a peculiar use of quartal harmonies or mirror chords combined with edgy rhythms. In some cases, as in the Divertimento for Orchestra, we have a polyphony of independent lines with chromatic passages that create peculiar harmonies and dissonances. To him there is no need to emancipate dissonances, on the contrary, he wants dissonances and different shades of chromatic colours eventually releasing the tension on a more conventional chord (quite rarely using a more conventional cadence passage). Some music is wholly chromatic, like Sonata #5 for clarinet and basso continuo. It is really on the compositions for clarinet solo and clarinet ensemble where we find more experimental and ground-breaking material (e.g. "Mosquito", "Divertimento #9", "Divertimento #12"). Informed by his research on extended techniques, sound effects and unconventional sound production, we find lots of microtonal music where he draws in more pitches (quarter tones and microtones) to the chromatic scale generally using them as grace notes or embellishments. Often Luciano exploits a small cell made of a few notes (generally a section of the chromatic scale) that he then varies, modulating them or transposing them or using these sound effects (a good example of this is Fragments #6 and the "Fantasia for Demi-Clarinets"). On most pieces there is clearly a gravitational pull, that is a note that acts as an anchor around which the music gravitates (as evident in Fragment #4).