Sorrentino, Vincenzo: Works Vol.1, Wind Chamber Music

Andrea Vecchiato began studying the flute at the age of ten at the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice with Monica Finco. In March 2015 he graduated with a mark of 10/10 and honours. In November of the same year he appeared as a soloist with the Teatro La Fenice Orchestra at the Teatro Carlo Goldoni in Venice. He also performed at the opening of a festival dedicated to Edgard Varèse at the Fondazione Vedova in Venice.

He has participated in world premieres of works by Marino Baratello, Giovanni Mancuso and Luca Mosca, and collaborated with Salvatore Sciarrino and Ivan Fedele for Biennale College in Venice. He has worked with institutions including the Biennale di Venezia, Teatro Malibran, Teatro Goldoni, Fondazione Levi and Scuola Grande di San Rocco. His performances have taken him to the Auditorium Pollini in Padua, the Sale Apollinee of Teatro La Fenice, Teatro Dario Fo in Camponogara, and the municipal theatres of Treviso and Mirano, among other venues.

After graduating, he continued his advanced studies with Davide Formisano.

Pianist Elisabetta Bócchese graduated with honours from the Venice Conservatory and continued her studies in Vienna. She has worked with numerous chamber ensembles and as a pianist at conservatories and masterclasses. Her teachers have included Sergio Fiorentino, Piernarciso Masi, Dario De Rosa, Christa Bützberger and Marina Rossi.

Fabio Pupillo graduated with Monica Finco and studied with G. Bernabò, E. Caroli, P. Wavre, Raymond Guiot and Conrad Klemm. He has collaborated with leading Italian orchestras, including the Arena di Verona Orchestra and the Turin Philharmonic as principal flute. For two years he was principal flute of the Young Italian Sinfonietta. He has also worked with I Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, the Orchestra di Padova e del Veneto and Filarmonia Veneta in Treviso, among others.

He has won prizes in competitions and performed in Italy, elsewhere in Europe and Japan, where he appeared in 2003. He founded Ensemble Musagète and has performed with G. Guglielmo, S. Tchakerian, M. Brunello, T. Campagnaro, B. Canino and S. Schilli. He also graduated from the university in Venice.

His educational work includes teaching flute at the music high school in Verona and giving masterclasses at academies and conservatories throughout Italy. He has served as general manager of DILS International Flute School and frequently sits on juries for national competitions. He created the educational project “Dentro il Suono” (“Inside the Sound”).

Flautist Giuseppina “Giusy” Mascheretti graduated at the age of seventeen from the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan and continued her studies with Peter-Lukas Graf, Glauco Cambursano and Severino Gazzelloni. She has worked as a soloist and principal flute with ensembles including the Angelicum Orchestra of RAI and I Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan.

Flautist Maddalena Lotter was born in Venice in 1990. She graduated with top marks and honours from the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice, where she studied with Monica Finco, and also graduated in literature from Ca’ Foscari University. She has collaborated with institutions including Teatro La Fenice, Biennale Musica, Fondazione Vedova and the Società Veneziana dei Concerti.

She attended the annual advanced piccolo course with Nicola Mazzanti in Florence, as well as masterclasses with Mario Caroli, Davide Formisano, Giampaolo Pretto and Paolo Taballione.

She has performed premieres of works by Luca Mosca and Giovanni Mancuso. With Mancuso, she founded an ensemble specialising in contemporary music and progressive rock.

Her particular interest in chamber music led her to found the woodwind quintet “Quintetto Pisani”, with which she has performed since 2012, including at Expo Milano 2015. She has also played principal flute alongside Andrea Vecchiato in the Venice Chamber Orchestra.

Guitarist Marco Nicolé graduated with honours under A. Amato and continued his studies with R. Chiesa. He performs as a soloist, in chamber ensembles and with orchestras. His recordings have received excellent reviews and have accompanied issues of national magazines including Il Fronimo and Amadeus.

Flautist Monica Finco was born in Venice, Italy. She began studying the flute at the age of ten at the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice with Pasquale Rispoli, continuing with Guido Novello. After graduating, she completed her studies with R. Greiss in Germany and A. Marion in France. In 1981 she met the distinguished Swiss flautist and teacher Conrad Klemm, who remained her guide in technique and style for many years.

Gifted with a precocious talent for interpretation, she began her concert career at seventeen. She has since performed as a soloist and in a variety of chamber ensembles, with a repertoire ranging from the Baroque to the modern period. Her concert appearances include the Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome, the Alessandro Scarlatti Society in Naples, Teatro La Fenice in Venice and Teatro Verdi in Trieste. She has appeared at Settembre Musica in Turin, the Festival dei Due Mondi in Spoleto, the Auditorium Giuseppe Verdi in Milan and the Venice Biennale, among many other venues and festivals. She has also taken part in special broadcasts for RAI in Venice, Trieste, Milan, Rome and Turin.

In France she has performed in Bordeaux, Brittany and Normandy and appeared at the Lille Festival. In Austria she has performed at the Salzburg Festival, and in Germany at the Guldener Autumn Festival of Early Music in Thuringia. She has played with the Teatro La Fenice Orchestra in Venice, Filarmonia Regionale Veneta and the Sanremo Symphony Orchestra. Interviews with her have appeared on radio and television, in music magazines and in national newspapers.

In 2015, 2016 and 2017 she was artistic director of the Festival dei Colli in San Gemini, Italy. She has worked as an artist for Briccialdi Flauti Italia and as an Italian artist and representative for LefreQue sound bridges. She collaborates with Sinfonica Edition on educational projects. Her educational work has also included teaching at the Venice Conservatory.

Nicola Mazzanti has served as solo piccolo of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino Orchestra since 1988. Many composers have written works for him, including pieces for piccolo and piano and concertos, and his name is associated with numerous premieres. As a soloist, he has appeared with I Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, the Malta Philharmonic Orchestra, the Florence Symphony Orchestra and Akronos of Prato.

He performs frequently as a flute and piccolo soloist and in chamber ensembles in Italy and abroad. An advocate for the piccolo as a solo instrument, he has appeared at the Vienna Flute Festival in 2003; National Flute Association conventions in San Diego in 2005, New York in 2009 and New Orleans in 2013; the International Convention of the British Flute Society in 2006; the first International Piccolo Symposium in Omaha, Nebraska, in 2007; the Serbian Flute Festival in Belgrade in 2009; Iowa Piccolo Intensive in 2011 and 2012; the first European Piccolo Festival in Slovenia in 2011; and several Italian flute conventions. In 2011 and 2012 he toured the United States, teaching and giving recitals in California, Michigan and Iowa. From 2008, Sir James Galway invited him annually to perform at his masterclass in Weggis, Switzerland.

Since 2001, Mazzanti has held annual piccolo courses at the MusicArea association in Florence and the Italian Flute Academy in Rome. His teaching appointments have included the Hochschule in Lucerne from 2009, the Conservatorio della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano from 2011 and the “G. Verdi” Conservatory in Milan from 2013. He is frequently invited to give masterclasses for flute associations and music schools in Italy and abroad. He has released three solo CDs, and his website is a regular destination for dedicated piccolo players. His book The Mazzanti Method, published by Theodore Presser in 2014, has been welcomed as a milestone in teaching the instrument.

He graduated in 1982 from the “Luigi Cherubini” Conservatory in Florence, where he studied with Sergio Giambi. He subsequently took lessons or attended masterclasses with James Galway, Aurèle Nicolet, Raymond Guiot, Emmanuel Pahud and Mario Ancillotti. In 1986 he earned an additional degree with honours in music history through D.A.M.S. (University of Arts and Music).

Pianist, composer and harpsichordist Roberto Scarpa Meylougan graduated with top marks in organ, composition and early liturgical chant from the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice. He studied with Sergio de Pieri and W. van de Pol, and continued his studies in France with Jean Guillou, Michel Chapuis, Jean-Patrice Brosse and Gaston Litaize. His virtuoso pedalboard technique was particularly appreciated by Olivier Messiaen and Karl Richter.

He has maintained an active concert career throughout Europe since 1978, collaborating with major international orchestras and artists including Claudio Abbado, Daniela Dessì, Vjekoslav Šutej and Sir Roger Norrington. Alongside the classical repertoire, he arranges and composes pop and folk music, working with Francesco Renga, Andrea Braido, Marco Ponchiroli and Antonio Maiello, among others.

Following specialised training, he began working as a sound engineer, microphone technician, recording director and audio editor. He has worked as a sound and recording engineer on more than 150 albums distributed worldwide by labels including Deutsche Grammophon, Universal, Philips and Decca. In 2006 he recorded Children, a solo album forming part of his project to reassess and rediscover the organ as a source of shared enjoyment and a means of presenting forgotten music, unusual repertoire and new works. In 2009 he was invited to perform at Methuen Memorial Music Hall in Boston, United States. That year he also appeared on the Sanremo stage with Daniela Dessì and Francesco Renga.

He undertook organ-building training with Piccinelli, Formentelli and Fratelli Ruffatti, collaborating with them on the restoration and construction of organs in the Veneto region.

From 2013 he worked on a UNESCO project funded by several Hungarian authorities to sample some of Italy’s most distinguished organs, with the aim of creating a multimedia sound library. He subsequently began touring with a virtual organ to promote the project. On 31 October 2014 he made his concert debut in Schio, Vicenza, on the Double Borgato pedal piano.

His extensive teaching activities include organ, organ composition, audio and video editing, recording techniques and technologies, and electroacoustics.

Marimba and vibraphone player Saverio Tasca was born in Bassano del Grappa, Italy, on 23 August 1963. He studied percussion in Vicenza with Guido Facchin and at the Sweelinck Conservatorium in Amsterdam with Jan Pustjens, Peter Prommel and Jeroen Goldstein. He subsequently continued his studies with David Friedman and Dave Samuels.

His teaching work includes percussion at the Vicenza Conservatory. In 1998 he assisted with a course given by David Friedman, and from 2001 he taught vibraphone and marimba alongside Dave Samuels at the Summer Jazz Workshop in Italy.

He has performed with Dave Samuels, David Friedman, Emmanuel Séjourné, Kuniko Kato, Filippo Lattanzi, Bogdan Bacanu, Peter Erskine, Glenn Ferris, Harold Danko, Claudio Roditi and Tony Scott, as well as many other distinguished musicians. He plays in groups and ensembles working in classical, jazz and contemporary music, with performances throughout Europe and tours of South Africa.

His compositions include Four Solo Pieces for Vibraphone and a Concerto for Vibraphone and String Orchestra, published in the United States.

In July 2004 he received third prize in the Percussion Arts Society’s Vibraphone Composition Contest in the United States for Marker Day. In 2009 his work Aha Oho received third prize in the Universal Marimba Competition’s international composition competition in Belgium.

In 2009 he performed with the Adams International Percussion Group, for which he wrote Olivi Erosi for six percussionists.

Flautist Simone Sandri graduated from the “Benedetto Marcello” Conservatory in Venice and continued his advanced studies there, focusing on solo and chamber repertoire. He has presented and performed his own arrangements for flute ensemble at the Archaeological Museum of Venice and Teatro Dario Fo in Camponogara. He has also collaborated with the Venice Biennale for events and concerts, including performances of his transcriptions of symphonic works for flute choir, and participated in the premiere of Luca Mosca’s opera Il gioco del vento e della luna.

Vincenzo Sorrentino (1973–2013) was born in Nola on 21 September 1973. His musical education was complemented by studies in the humanities, which he was unable to complete. At the “Domenico Cimarosa” Conservatory in Avellino, he graduated in piano in 1996 and composition in 2002, subsequently completing a master's degree in composition in 2007 and a diploma in electronic music in 2011.

The study of composition, which he found particularly demanding and congenial to his sensitivity, occupied a central place in his artistic career. Through sustained reading, research, critical listening and experimental courses in which tradition met new technologies in a search for innovation, he developed a body of work receptive to musical influences from abroad.

Although he achieved success in national and international composition competitions, his music reached a wider audience through its circulation online and through rewarding collaborations with performers. These collaborations helped focus his predominantly chamber-music output on three principal instruments: harp, guitar and flute.

He devoted much of his output to the flute. From 2012, his music was featured in the annual programme of the National Flute Association Convention in the United States.

This recording realises a project that Sorrentino had only been able to plan: recording the works arising from his artistic collaboration with Venetian flautist Monica Finco and piccolo player Nicola Mazzanti from Prato. Beyond its artistic value, the album stands as a testament to the esteem and friendship of all those who contributed to its creation.