Music as an artform
I’ve been a musician my whole life. I’ve mainly played jazz, but also many other genres, performing throughout Italy and across Europe with various ensembles. I’ve taken part in the recording of around thirty albums, five of which under my own name. One of my pieces on YouTube has been viewed by over half a million people.
For a while, my artistic journey focused on the concept of collaborative music — a kind of Wikipedia of musical composition — which I called Kapuziner Strasse; it’s a project I still believe in deeply, though perhaps the time for it hasn’t quite come yet. We’ll see.
Today, my music takes shape through what I call The Game of Music.
Music as a profession
I’ve taught my instrument, the guitar, for over twenty years and have had more than two thousand students in many schools and several conservatories, both in Italy and abroad. Today, I limit myself to running bimonthly workshops during the school year. Every year, I organize the Guitar Campus, un workshop per chitarristi di tutti i livelli. Ho scritto anche un paio di manuali ad argomento musicale.
Since 2018, I’ve been managing the Centro Musica of the Municipality of Trento, where I try to build a community of people who come together to share their love for music.
Through the website www.accordi-chitarra.it, one of the leading Italian sites for beginner guitarists, I’ve offered free lessons to over 30,000 people.
Music as a means
Together with luthier Stefano Robol, I designed and built a low-cost guitar for developing countries: the Chiquitica. We produced and sold a couple of thousand of them; we always had more orders than we could fulfill — despite doing no promotion at all — and eventually realized it was like having a second job. Since we were doing all of this on a purely voluntary basis, we reluctantly put the project on hold. But for anyone interested, it’s still there — ready to go.
With the help of a group of friends and the support of the Spagnolli-Bazzoni Association, sostengo attivamente il progetto della prima scuola di musica in Burundi e di una scuola di musica in un remoto paesino cubano di nome Rodas. Per questo ed altri progetti continuo il mio impegno come volontario nell’associazione UpDoo World, the nonprofit organization I founded in 2016.
Life
I’m the partner of Ornella and the father of Filippo — and, truth be told, compared to that, everything written above matters very little.
