Biography

My life as a musician began around 1964, when I was eight, thanks to my father's guitar: he was a baker with a passion for music. Curious about the "tool", I started playing with it and building little melodies… I would play one of them obsessively, until my parents could not stand it any more.

Giovanni as a child with his father and family, holding his father's guitar — With my father

The real revelation came when I heard Segovia playing Bach, and I began working out pieces by ear, such as the gavotte from the Suite BWV 1006.

The seventies: studies

In the early seventies the Conservatory of Frosinone opened a special classical guitar course. I enrolled, and there I met Luisa Lauri, who has been my inseparable musical partner for some twenty years now. Unfortunately I ended up with a teacher I did not get on with: he told me to drop what I was playing and start down a different path, he talked a lot and taught me little. So I left academic studies, but not the guitar, and kept playing both alone and in groups.

The eighties: the acoustic guitar

In the early eighties a new path opened up: the acoustic guitar, and fingerpicking in particular. Meeting Giovanni Pelosi led me into this other very important musical world. For about three years I played this repertoire, learned many pieces and gave concerts, but at some point I realised it was not my road. Giovanni Pelosi went on to become one of the most important fingerpicking guitarists; I was not satisfied, because harmonically those pieces were often repetitive.

So I went back to classical guitar, studying Bach, Castelnuovo-Tedesco, Giuliani, Sor and others, and at the same time I started composing. I studied harmony with a friend who taught harmony and composition at the Conservatory of Frosinone: he grew tired of fixing the pieces I brought him, and for two years he gave me harmony lessons free of charge.

In 1989 I bought my first luthier-made guitar, a cedar-top Scandurra that I still own, to play Vivaldi's Concerto for lute and strings in D major in P. Cherici's transcription for two guitars, together with my friend Nazzareno Massimiliani, guitarist and luthier. It was my first real concert, in an auditorium full of people, because it was a charity concert for Telethon.

I remember that the moment I sat down and the hall fell silent, my arms and hands froze. Panic had taken hold of me, and I managed to play the notes only because I had studied them very well.

Nazzareno Massimiliani had built an eight-string guitar, and he lent it to me for a couple of years. He gave me a CD of Konrad Junghänel playing some of S. L. Weiss's suites on the baroque lute, and I understood that if I wanted to play this music, six strings would not be enough to transcribe it.

Another acquaintance, the singer Carlo Carulli, somehow had Ruggero Chiesa's transcription of Weiss's entire London manuscript, and that sparked my passion for baroque music. I transcribed the suites from that CD for the eight-string guitar, using absurd tunings but keeping the original keys.

With this eight-string guitar I began accompanying a Renaissance choir, playing basso continuo, and I gave many concerts where I also performed these Weiss suites as a soloist.

The nineties: the archlute

In 1995 I took part in a lute masterclass with Paolo Cherici, and at that moment I decided to buy an archlute to play continuo with the Renaissance choir.

At the same time I kept composing, writing my Suite in D minor for recorder, baroque violin and lute. I heard that my former conservatory classmate Luisa Lauri was studying recorders, so I got in touch with her.

That was the start of a collaboration that is still active today: we formed a trio with violin, performing Renaissance and baroque repertoire in concert, and at the same time a guitar duo.

The two thousands: the diploma

In 2000 I decided to settle an account that had been left open with the guitar: the diploma.

I enrolled as an external student. In June 2000 I passed the music theory exam; in July 2001 the fifth-year exam, and in the autumn session of September that same year the exams in music history and complementary harmony; in July 2002 the eighth-year exam.

Finally, in October 2003, I took my diploma at the wonderful Conservatory of L'Aquila, which no longer exists. In short, a diploma as an external student in just three years: it was an open account, and I like to settle accounts as quickly as possible.

Without the diploma I would have been the same guitarist I am now.

Since 2010

A lot has happened in recent years, starting with the release of my two CDs:

Sarabande
Schiarazula Marazula, arie dal '200 al '600

Very important was my artistic meeting with Adele Maliziola, flautist and pianist, because it allowed me to make transcriptions not only of early music, such as Nino Rota's Prelude XIII arranged from piano for flute and guitar, widening my transcription work from early music to the twentieth century.

Thanks to this partnership I was able to bring this work to concerts, with very encouraging results.

In 2014 the Jomade Trio was born, when cellist Mauro Cipriani joined us.

After about three years of intense concert activity, a third album of original repertoire and transcriptions for the three instruments is in preparation.