Sylvio Gualda has been very active in the field of musical creation since the 1960s. He has worked to broaden the possibilities of percussion instruments and has trained many young professionals. In 1968 he became the tympani soloist of the Paris Opera Orchestra and gave the first performance on stage of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s ballet, Zyklus. He also promoted new works, for instance by Marius Constant, André Jolivet, Nguyen Thien Dao, François-Bernard Mâche. He worked for a long time with Iannis Xenakis ever since the first performance of Psappha in London, in 1976 which he played the next year in Paris at the Opéra Garnier. From 1973 on, Sylvio Gualda was the main organizer at the French radio of the first percussion recital in the history of music. In 1970, he worked with Jean-Pierre Drouet, Katia and Marielle Labèque for premieres of pieces by Berio and Marius Constant and also for many performances of Bartok’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion.

He also played with Elisabeth Chojnacka and they premiered Xenakis’ Komboï in 1981. Sylvio Gualda is also a conductor, and here again, he devotes most of his work to new music; he often collaborated with Rolf Liebermann and conducted the first performance of Nguyen Thien Dao’s oratorio Les Enfants d’Izieu with the Philharmonic Orchestra of the French Radio. Pursuing a double career as a percussionist (he was the first Western percussionist to play in China in 1981) and as a conductor, he is also a teacher and has many students from all over the world in his class at the Versailles conservatory; he also comes regularly to the Centre Acanthes. It is here that the famous group “Les Pléïades” was active and that he conducted the composition class workshops with the Orchestre Lyrique of Avignon-Aix-en-Provence, then with the National Orchestra of Lorraine.