Composers

He began his music studies under the guidance of his late father, the composer Domenico Guaccero. He then studied piano with Elena Matteucci. In 1995 he graduated from the Conservatorio di Musica "S. Cecilia" (Rome), majoring in composition under the guidance of Maestro Luciano Pelosi; in 1997 he obtained a second degree in electronic music with Maestro Riccardo Bianchini.

G. Guaccero is a composer of chamber, symphonic, and electronic music, as well as music for the stage. As a performer and arranger of music by others, he is acquainted with "non-classical" and improvised music (jazz, chanson, etc.). His compositions have been played at several music festivals and concerts of contemporary music. Among these, the 33rd and 34th Festival di Nuova Consonanza, Progetto Musica, Euromusica at the Teatro Ghione, Folkstudio; and concerts at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica "Silvio D'Amico", the Goethe Institut, Sala Casella and the Conservatorio "Santa Cecilia" (Rome); Di Nuovo Musica (Reggio Emilia); Concerti in Castello (Ferrara); Istituzione Sinfonica Abruzzese (L'Aquila); Conservatorio "Luigi Cherubini" (Florence); and overseas, at the Centro de Estudios Electro-acusticos, the Catholic University of Buenos Aires, and at the Ringve Museum in Trondheim, Norway.
Among those who have performed Guaccero's compositions, one may list the Coro Aureliano, Ensemble Ars Ludi, Ensemble Colosseum, Ex Novo Ensemble, Solisti di Roma, Gruppo Strumentale Musica d'Oggi, Orchestra Roma Symphonia, Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese, Trio Phorbeia.

As a composer who often uses poetry in his compositions, Giovanni Guaccero has collaborated with the author and theatre director Francesco Randazzo; with the Brasilian poet Maria Lúcia Verdi; and his Salmo Metropolitano (1995) is based on the writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini.
The piece Per Versi Diversi was selected in 1997 by the Reading Committee of Nuova Consonanza for the project "New Generations".

Some of his compositions have been broadcast by the radio channels of RAI - Radio Tre and Radio Vaticana.
His CD, "Salmo Metropolitano ed altre composizioni" (Domani Musica), was published in1999. The CD was presented at the IRTEM (Istituto di Ricerca per il Teatro Musicale) and enthusiastically reviewed by Enzo Siciliano on the magazine weekly of the national newspaper La Repubblica. Guaccero's pieces have been also published in other CDs and in print by Domani Musica, as well as by the publishers Pontevecchio and Semar.
From 1991 to 1996 he was one of the organisers (together with James Demby, Alessandro Vecchiotti, Raffaele Bella and Roberto Capacci) of the annual festival Folkstudio Contemporanea, which developed out of an idea of the late Giancarlo Cesaroni.Since 1999 G. Guaccero is a member of the association of composers and musicians, NUOVA CONSONANZA.
Guaccero's writings on musicology have been published on Allegro Espressivo, Antologia Vieusseux, Gargantua, NC News, KonSequenz.
Guaccero is also involved in the teaching of music. He has lectured at the Conservatorio "S. Cecilia", Accademia Nazionale di Danza, Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio, Centro Attività Musicali Aureliano.
His compositions, whose style can be termed eclectic, reveal the attempt to blend elements of various origins in a unitary design. One can detect, on the one hand, the re-reading of the "cultured" tradition of 20th-century European music, in which Bartòk-like composition techniques are blended with reminiscences of "aleatory" music, and on the one hand the clear influence of the Afro-American musical tradition (Jazz and Brazilian music).

MOST RECENT ACTIVITY

In October 2000, Guaccero took place at the roundtable discussion " Due tre cose sulla musica del secondo Novecento " (A Couple of Things on Late Nineteenth-Century Music), at the Gabinetto Scientifico Letterario G. P. Vieusseux, in Florence, along with the composers Carlo Boccadoro, Michele Dall'Ongaro, Gaetano Giani Luporini, Marco Ligabue, Umberto Petrin, Romano Pezzati, Fabio Vacchi.
For the MittelFest 2000, he wrote the music for the spectacle by Giacomo Zito "La poesia del Friuli - Il ciant de tiare" , based on the writings of Leonardo Zanier, Elsa Buiese and Pier Paolo Pasolini.

In November 2000, he was one of several composers (including Andrea Nicoli, Ada Gentile, Lamberto Macchi, Enrico Marocchini and Mauro Cardi) who wrote the music for the melologue "Il Viaggio della Vita", based on the writings of Pier Paolo Pasolini selected by Enzo Siciliano. The representation was performed by the Orchestra Sinfonica Abruzzese (conducted by Enrico Marocchini) at the Teatro S. Filippo, L'Aquila, and in other cities in Abruzzo.
In April 2001, Guaccero participated to the itinerant music event "Ai Confini del Suono - La Musica del Ghana" (At the Borders of Sound - The Music of Ghana), along with the composers James Demby, Boris Porena and Gabriel Maldonado, and the ethnomusicologist David Locke, the percussionists Ruben Agbeli and Renzo Stefani). In the course of this event, his piece "Il combattimento di anima e corpo" was performed in Pontassieve (Tuscany), Florence and Rome.

Lately, Guaccero wrote the piano piece "Canzone per Paola" for the group project Per Paola Bernardi, dedicated to the memory of the late harpsichordist Paola Bernardi, which saw the participation of composers Mauro Bortolotti, Lamberto Macchi, Andrea Mascagni, Ennio Morricone, Francesco Pennisi, Irma Ravinale and Fausto Razzi. First published in a volume, the pieces were first performed at the Biblioteca Casanatense (Rome) on 21 May 2001.
Guaccero's most recent initiative is the constitution of the group ALQUÌMIA, which performs those among his pieces that span contemporary music, experimental jazz and song, finding inspiration in the poetry of Maria Lucia Verdi, Marcia Theophilo, Bernardo Notargiacomo and Luigi Romano. The members of Alquimia are: Alessandra Del Maro (voice), Stefano Cogolo (flutes), Nicola Raffone (drums and percussion), Gianfranco Tedeschi (double bass), and Guaccero himself (piano and live electronics). The group has performed in Rome at, among other venues, the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio, Multimedia, Teatro dell'Ascolto.