Riccardo Piacentini (born 3 July 1958, in Moncalieri, Province of Turin) is an Italian composer and pianist, professor of Composition at the Milan Conservatory.
He studied with Carlo Pinelli, favorite pupil of Giorgio Federico Ghedini and Franco Donatoni.
He participated also in courses and workshops with Sylvano Bussotti, György Ligeti, Ennio Morricone, André Richard (at the Heinrich Strobel Center in Freiburg, where Luigi Nono worked), Karlheinz Stockhausen, and in 1988 he was among the performed composers at the Internationale Ferienkurse für Neue Musik in Darmstadt.
He is particularly active both as composer of foto-musica con foto-suoni for museums - a new musical technique for counterpointing human voice, acoustic and electronic instruments and environmental sounds -, and as pianist of the Duo Alterno.
Since 1986 he is artistic director of Rive-Gauche Concerti's season, now at the Accademia Albertina in Turin.