THE ARTISTS

David Russell

Concerto di apertura, Sala dei Giganti, Friday 8th , 8 pm
David Russell returns to Festival Homenaje, after the great success of his recital and masterclasses at Barco Teatro during the first and the second edition and will play again at the Sala dei Giganti  where he played in 1970, when he was invited by the Centro Chitarristico Veneto at the beginning of his career. It is now not only a great honour for the Festival to feature his concert once more, but also a moment of great emotion and memory for the city of Padua, as well as for the guitarist himself.
Grammy Award winner in 2005 for his CD “Aire Latino” in the category of best instrumental soloist in classical music, with an Honorary Doctorate in Music by the University of Arizona in Tucson in 2014 and inducted into the Guitar Foundation of America Hall of Fame in 2018, classical guitarist David Russell is world-renowned for his musical and artistic sensibility. He has received numerous and prestigious awards worldwide, of which we will only mention a few: he was nominated a member of the Royal Academy of Music of London in 1997; in 2003, he was awarded the honour of being made "adopted son" of Es Migjor, the city of Menorca where he grew up (which later named a street after him, "Avinguda David Russell"); in November 2003 he was awarded the Medal of Honour by the Conservatory of the Balearics; in 2005 the Vigo Auditorium was named after him and in 2009 he was named honorary member of "Amigos de la Guitarra", the oldest guitar society in Spain.
David Russell has released more than 17 solo albums.
He also started the “David Russell y Marìa Jesùs” NGO, providing support to developing countries (including by financing projects for water extraction and access to safe drinking water in Africa).
He is an active concert artist, appearing regularly in some of the world’s most prestigious venues (including New York, London, Tokyo, Los Angeles, Madrid, Toronto and Seoul) and holding popular masterclasses.  
www.davidrussellguitar.com

Jason Vieaux

Intrecci di corde, Sala dei Giganti, Sunday 10th , 8 pm
Grammy-winner Jason Vieaux, “among the elite of today’s classical guitarists” (Gramophone), is described by NPR as “perhaps the most precise and soulful classical guitarist of his generation”.
Jason Vieaux has cemented his reputation as an artist of brilliance and uncompromised mastery. Cited for his “eloquent and vibrant performances” on disc (Gramophone Magazine) he is hailed as “virtuosic, flamboyant, dashing and, sometimes ineffably lyrical” (New York Times) on stage.
Sought-after for his extensive concerto repertoire, Vieaux has performed with a long list of orchestras and with renowned conductors.
Vieaux’s extensive discography includes his “Bach Volume 2: Works for Violin” released on Azica in 2022 to rave reviews for his “eloquent and vibrant performances” (Gramophone). Additional 2022 releases include “Shining Night” featuring his duo with acclaimed violinist Anne Akiko Meyers (Avie Records) and Michael Fine’s “Concierto del Luna” with flutist Alexa Still (Sony Classical), both enjoying strong critical acclaim. Vieaux recorded Pat Metheny’s “Four Paths of Light”, a solo work dedicated to him by Pat, for Metheny’s 2021 album “Road to the Sun”. Jason Vieaux won the 2014 Best Instrumental Classical Solo Grammy Award for “Play”.
A busy touring performer, Jason Vieaux enjoys repeated invitations from distinguished series. Jason Vieaux enjoys ongoing performing and recording collaborations with the Escher String Quartet, mezzo-soprano Sasha Cooke, violinist Anne Akiko Meyers, harpist Yolanda Kondonassis, accordion/bandoneon virtuoso Julien Labro, and saxophone virtuoso Timothy McAllister.
In 2011 Vieaux co-founded the guitar department at the Curtis Institute of Music (with David Starobin). He has taught at the Cleveland Institute of Music for 25 years. Jason’s online Guitar School for Artistworks Inc. has hundreds of subscribers from all over the world. He plays a guitar by Gernot Wagner, 2013, made in Frankfurt.
www.jasonvieaux.com

Quartetto Indaco

Intrecci di corde, Sala dei Giganti, Sunday 10th , 8 pm
(Eleonora Matsuno and Ida Di VIta Violins, Santi Jamiang Viola, Cosimo Carovani Cello)
The Indaco Quartet is today considered among the most interesting Italian string quartets of its generation: Paolo Viola says of the quartet that is formed by “musicians who have achieved a magnificent sound and exemplary amalgamation, and who have fully entered the elite of the most important Italian quartets”. After graduating from Fiesole, the Q. I. follows specialization courses with exponents of the major quartets of our and also perfected himself within the prestigious Accademia Chigiana with which he collaborates by playing concerts both in Italy and abroad. The quartet was awarded the Scotese Prize in 2017, the Börsen Club Hannover and after winning the special prize Jeunesses Musicales at the International Competition Premio Paolo Borciani 2014, was among the finalists of the same Competition in 2017 and has won several international awards and scholarships." Compact ensemble, full of enamel and exuberance", Q.I. highlights its artistic qualities in a vast repertoire, from classical to contemporary, with a particular predilection for 19th and 20th century authors. Guest of prestigious music festivals and institutions in Italy, the Quartet also performs regularly in Germany Switzerland, Ireland, Latvia, Sweden, Portugal, Spain and Holland. He also actively collaborates with internationally renowned soloists and chamber musicians, including Enrico Bronzi, Avi Avital, Julian Bliss, Franziska Pietsch, Josu de Solaun, Bruno Canino, Massimo Mercelli, Claudia Barainsky, Giovanni Scaglione. The quartet recorded for “Brillant Classics”, “Ema Vinci S.r.l.” and “Sconfinarte” in Milan. Since 2017 he has taken part in the international project Le Dimore del Quartetto and has been a quartet in residence at the HighScore festival in Pavia and with the Milano Classica orchestra since 2017.
www.quartettoindaco.com

Duo Bandini - Chiacchiaretta

Tango y Folia, Barco Teatro, Tuesday 12th , 8 pm
Giampaolo Bandini - Cesare Chiacchiaretta Duo, formed in 2002, aiming to popularize Argentine music through the charm and magic of its most representative instruments. The duo immediately became an important point of reference in the international concert circuit, thanks to their great communicativeness combined with an extraordinary charisma. They have since been invited to the most important festivals and theatres, touring the world across more than 50 countries, to outstanding critical and audience approval. They have also been recorded by the most important radio and television broadcasters in Italy and abroad.  In 2016 they had their debut for the “Decc”a label with the cd “Escualo”, hommage to Astor Piazzolla, followed by "Tango, Misterio y Folia" in 2020.
The duo had the privilege of playing Astor Piazzolla's Double Concerto "Hommage a Liegi" conducted by Maestro Leo Brouwer. The great Cuban composer has also dedicated to them La Folia a Traves de los siglos in 2017. Additionally, they’ve performed original compositions written for them by the likes of Daniel Binelli, Fernando Tavolaro, Saverio Rapezzi, and Maximo Diego Pujol, who dedicated to them the Double Concerto for guitar, bandoneon and orchestra Luminosa Buenos Aires (2009).
As teachers, the duo are requested by the most renowned Academies and international Universities, holding classes at the Institutes of Higher Education "Luigi Boccherini" in Lucca and "Umberto Giordano" in Foggia.
www.bandinichiacchiaretta.com

Antigoni Goni

Paesaggi sonori mediterranei, Barco Teatro, Wednesday 13th, 8 pm
The universally praised Greek guitarist Antigoni Goni is a British Council, Royal Academy and Juilliard School scholar. As the founder of Classical Guitar magazine Maurice J. Summerfield, puts it “today she is an internationally acclaimed soloist and recording artist, sought after pedagogue and festival organizer, whose artistry and expertise is in great demand internationally”.
Her career blossomed in the mid 90s after winning the Guitar Foundation of America Competition. Since then she performed virtually everywhere, in concert halls such as the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Covent Garden and the Wigmore Hall in London, the Odeon of Herodes Atticus in Acropolis (Athens) as well as the Philharmonic and the Cappella Sale in St. Petersburg, the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow and Carnegie Hall in New York to mention just a few. Her highly successful recordings for “Naxos”, “Koch” and “Timespan” records have been praised for being "expressively poetic and technically exciting". Her last CD “Hymn to the Muse” is a collection of original works and transcriptions directly inspired by Greek culture and heritage. She is the founder of the Guitar Department at the Pre-College Division of Juilliard School of Music of New York where she also taught for 10 years. Since 2005 Antigoni Goni has been Professor of Guitar at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels and a member of its Artistic Committee. In April 2015, the Royal Conservatory named her “Professor of the year” making her the youngest professor ever presented with the “Madame de la Hault” prize, awarded by the Brussels Royal Conservatory’s “Patrimonium”. She is the creator of The Brussels Guitar Laboratory (a collaboration with the research department of the Royal Conservatory of Brussels) and the founder and artistic director of The Volterra Project. Summer Guitar Institute, an innovative Classical Guitar workshop that in Tuscany (Italy).
Antigoni Goni records on a 1989 José Romanillos and performs on a 2012 Andrea Tacchi Guitar.
www.antigonigoni.com

Gabriele Lodi, Luther

Conference, Barco Teatro, Tuesday 12th ,10 am
Gabriele Lodi's guitars are loved by leading international concert players and by young students alike.
Born in 1976, he learned the art of guitar making from the age of 13 in the workshop of his father Maurizio and uncle Leandro in Carpi. In the afternoons after school, Gabriele would learn by observing the work done by his father and uncle and he gradually grew to master the craft. At the age of 20 he was officially active full time in the F.lli Lodi workshop.
In recent years, Gabriele has worked hard to promote his work at national and international exhibitions, offering his instruments to a growing international market. Thanks to his commitment, he has developed important relationships with Japan, China, Canada, USA, Australia and Argentina.
Gabriele continues the research work he started in the family workshop on historical instruments, not only by continuing the art of restoring and recovering old guitars, but also by launching his own project to reinterpret the instrument and bring innovation, starting from the most unique and significant characteristics that have made the history of the guitar.
Gabriele has been a professor of “history and development of plucked string instruments” at the Frescobaldi Conservatory of Ferrara since 2010. He has organised exhibitions of ancient musical instruments and conferences in prestigious locations including MondoMusica in Cremona.
"The Lodi lutherie places a strong focus on the relationship with the musicians who come to our workshop. We constantly work with them to seek the truest and most practical musical meaning of the guitar today. We also believe that we need to study and understand the past so we can do our work better”.
www.lodiguitars.com

Stephen Goss, Composer and Guitarist

Conference, Barco Teatro, Friday 15th ,10 am
The participation of the Welsh guitarist and composer Stephen Goss will add an international edge and state-of-the art research to the Festival.
His music is played by the world’s major classical guitarists, who have also commissioned many works from him. These include David Russell, SoloDuo, Zoran Dukić, Aniello Desiderio, Miloš Karadaglić and Xuefei Yang (including chamber works with cellist Natalie Clein and tenor Ian Bostridge).
As a guitarist, he has worked with Takemitsu, Henze, Peter Maxwell Davies and Elliott Carter and has performed and recorded with several ensembles including the Tetra Guitar Quartet, as well as a soloist.
Recent projects have included the legendary guitarist John Williams, who recorded and toured his “Guitar Concerto” (2012) with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in 2014. Some of the world’s major orchestras have performed his works.
He has released over 80 albums with more than a dozen record labels, including EMI, Decca, Telarc, Virgin Classics, Naxos and Deutsche Grammophon. His oeuvre includes large-scale orchestral compositions, choral works, chamber music and solo pieces.
Stephen Goss is currently Professor of Composition and Director of the International Guitar Research Centre at the University of Surrey, UK, and a Professor of Guitar at the Royal Academy of Music in London. In 2018 he was made a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Music, an honour limited to 300 living people.
He was born in Wales on February 2, 1964.
www.stephengoss.net

Francesco Antonioni, Composer

Conference, Barco Teatro, Friday 15th ,10 am
Francesco Antonioni hails from a family of musicians. He was born in Italy, in 1971. He graduated with honors in composition and piano. He continued his studies at Rome’s Santa Cecilia National Academy, under Azio Corghi. He was then awarded The Queen Mother Scholarship and studied under Julian Anderson at the Royal College of Music in London.
Antonioni’s compositions have been performed by some of the music world’s biggest stars, and have been broadcast on radio and TV throughout Europe and in the United States. He has received commissions from prestigious music institutions, as well as from his mentors, George Benjamin and Hans Werner Henze, for whom he worked as an assistant for three years.
Over the course of his career he has worked with world-renowned conductors and musicians and has collaborated with some of the world’s leading symphony orchestras and ensembles.
Antonioni’s music reflects the breadth of his cultural interests, as he seeks to distill an array of contemporary trends and combine them with traditional classical music forms. Known for his originality and independent spirit, Antonioni has delved into a plethora of musical genres and composed pieces for a host of diverse occasions, which have been performed at some of the world’s most important concert venues and festivals. He has also written music for television, including documentaries produced by Italy’s RAI network, as well as for a photo exhibition by the late Italian photographer Gabriele Basilico.
Francesco Antonioni has also won a number of international awards. In 2009 he was the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, and served as a visiting scholar at Cornell University (USA). He has also taught at the Dartington International Summer School.
www.francescoantonioni.com

Giacomo Susani, Guitarist and Composer