GIOVANNI
GUACCERO

«Giovanni Guaccero is not much over thirty, and his music devours the most diverse of foods to great avail, be these offered to him by Italian masters - Petrassi, Maderna spring to mind - or by free jazz, in the form of inventive Coltrane-style soloists, or even by anonymous ethnological materials (as in "Africa" 1990). In this Domani Musica CD (DMCD 8903) by Guaccero you will discover his generous and also rigourous ability to amalgamate "voice" (contents) with substantial orchestral groupings. His "Salmo Metropolitano", composed to words by Pasolini, Roberto Gualtieri and Guaccero himself, is outstanding. It is fearful of the relationship between fathers and sons, the dialectic between history and nature, which lays a trap in handing down values and at the same time consuming them. But the end theme, treated with true stylistic courage, is: how can we move beyond twentieth-century clichés of expression?»

ENZO SICILIANO
(La Repubblica - Il Venerdì, 30-7-1999)

«…an intellectual of change»

LUIGI PESTALOZZA
(Musica/Realtà, novembre 2001)

« (…) Finally, Salmo Metropolitano is a grand musical fresco in which Pier Paolo Pasolini’s insightful words on the relationship between the "generation of the fathers" and the sons offer Guaccero a framework for the theme of the "exit from the nineteenth century"– an exit to be understood as the quest for a new musical idiom free from any anxiety of definition and classification. »

VALENTINO SANI
(Booklet CD “Salmo metropolitano ed altre composizioni”, 1998)

«The work of Guaccero, widely applauded, (...) makes its own the prophetic words which Pier Paolo Pasolini flung at his own contemporaries: "Our guilt as fathers consists of believing that history is not and cannot be but bourgeois history", and: "even if children are good, if their fathers have sinned, then they must be punished". (...) Guaccero, son of the sons of those fathers, means to reckon with the inherited defeat by seeking to bring the tradition of musical composition outside of this "bourgeois history", from which not even the avant-gardes of the 'sixties were able to free themselves»

CLAUDIO VEDOVATI
(Il Manifesto, 18-06-1995)

« (…) It is no coincidence that the most successful compositions were, in our opinion, the ones which went with "lighter" verses like Uno dei tanti epiloghi with music by Giovanni Guaccero, story of a dream, dream of a life, of a journey to a far-away place, conjured up by the sound of a tambourine, at first unaccompanied, dancing, naive - like Ninetto in his dream - and then joined by an archaic-sounding flute, and by strings, with just the violin sketching a melody of Bartokian flavour.»

GIUSEPPINA ROSSI
(Il Manifesto, 9-5-2002)

«The soundscape, while maintaining a constant background colour, passes through different forms, sounds and thoughts. This divine spirit (a tree? a mountain? a song? a flower?) has always been alive in the music of Giovanni Guaccero, but in this case it concretely assumes the appearance of a path (musically autonomous but intimately bound up with images) which, starting off from an evident mystical suspension (Viaggio I, Montagne I, Movimento dell’onda) and passing through some diabolical experimentation (Vortice, Fatica..), lands on a form of song which is at the same time new and old (Personaggio possibile), where the composer's personality is so strongly recognizable as to bring to mind a sage and stalwart mountain.»

FABRIZIO DE ROSSI RE
(Booklet CD “Musica per le montagne”, 2004)

«Musica per le montagne. The greatest marvel of this disc is that, while it was conceived as an accompaniment to an audio-visual performance and video inspired by the mountains, it pulses with its own life-force, with no need for visual references. Perhaps because it is backed up by other pieces, which are nonetheless perfectly suited to the CD's general conception. Giovanni Guaccero, a musician and composer from Rome, is writer or co-writer of all the pieces, in which he exhibits a multifaceted poetics of sound, mixing contemporary tessiture, jazz devices, evocations of theatre, brush-strokes of South-American influence and echoes of the most erudite of Italian 1970s progressive rock, in a totally modern fashion. A magic pot-pourri which releases a music which is suspended and thoughtful but never immobile: : a decidedly supple form of avant-garde»

ANTONELLO ANTONELLI
(World music magazine, marzo-aprile 2005)

«Musica per le montagne. A CD of descriptive, functional music, not so far from the "border music" which is closest to us and which we love the most. It is made up of certain improvisational devices, and a reference which I can detect beneath the tracks, especially in certain "suspensions" of the piano phrasing, which is to Roedelius (…). This is "systems music", which caused us some discomfort in its experimental phase and which now succeeds in making our heads spin, this time in an aesthetic sense, if only we can let ourselves go. So it's an interesting disc, a good one to have on one's plate.»

GIROLAMO DE SIMONE
(Konsequenz, 2005)

« (…) Musica per le montagne, which is a declaration of intent right from very the title onwards, has a lusty life of its own, engaging with quality European jazz in its citation of Manfred Eichner's "school", but at the same time maintaining an Italian undertone. (…) A journey which is an invitation to nostalgia, a kind of recherche of spirit and nature. »

BIAGIO COSCIA
(Officina HCE, 2004)

Comments on “Le Isole felici”

«Only a profound connoisseur of Jobim and bossa nova more refined, he could conceive a music of this type»

STEFANO LA VIA
(interview to G. Guaccero in http://www.absolutepoetry.org, 2011)

«The Guaccero's music, offers a vivacious, rhythmic and original microcosm inspired expertly to the enveloping and magical Brazilian music, Italian opera buffa and the sounds of contemporaneity, and invites us to pleasant and new listening solutions, expanding the possibilities of expression of a work for children.»

TULLIO VISIOLI
(Cd, "L'Arco magico", 2011)

«Putting the attention on the sound, the music is attractive without being never easy, allowing you to follow Victorinus in a journey within a journey.»

LARA CORBACCHINI
(about "L'Arco Magico", Musica Domani 166, 2013)

«What I find compelling about Giovanni's writing is that he is able to tell this story in a language delightfully combining impeccable academic bravura with street-wise connectedness.»

ALVIN CURRAN
(Preface to "L'improvvisazione nelle avanguardie musicali. Roma, 1965-1978", Aracne 2013)

«Giovanni Guaccero deviates from this line-modernist twentieth century, and identifies a middle way (...) in favor of a contemporary language, immediately engaging through the use of shared resources.»

ANTONIO ROSTAGNO
(Booklet CD “Liriche greche”, 2014)

«[...] it's need to empathize with a different code. Guaccero succeeds to do it masterfully, never overpower poetry [...], constructing a musical phrasing that helps almost reception poetic message [...].»

GIORGIO ADAMO
(Booklet CD “Non capisco la direzione dei venti”, 2015)

«Brazilian music is proud to have influenced an artist with so much talent, and we Brazilian artists will learn a great deal by this work. This is an extremely coherent and aesthetically impeccable CD. Congratulations to all the musicians who participated in it.»

GUINGA
(Booklet CD “A roda dos planetas errantes”, 2016)

ARTICLES, REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS

• Angela Caporale, Ricerca e sperimentazione nella scrittura per coro di Giovanni Guaccero, ["Speciale Giovanni Guaccero", 4-12-2016] read
• Luigi Onori, L'insopprimibile bisogno dell'utopia sonora, Il Manifesto/Alias, 6 – 06 – 2015 read
• Lara Corbacchini, "L'arco magico", Musica Domani 03/2013 read
• Claudia Bova, "L'arco magico" favola in musica per affascinare i più piccoli, Il Quotidiano, 11-06-2012 read
• Bruna Liguori Valenti Vocalità infantile, Ricordi, 2012 [examples from "Le Isole felici", pp. 134, 138, 143]
• Stefano La Via, Fra Nuova Consonanza e MPB - intervista a Giovanni Guaccero , Absolutepoetry, 26-01-2011 read
• [p. p. cam.], Il Natale secondo Dickens, Calabria Ora, 16-12-2008 (on Cantico di Natale)
• Laura Valente, Nuova Consonanza – Una maratona impura di suoni del Novecento, La Repubblica, 14-11-2008
• Tiberia de Matteis, Milena Vukotic – L’omaggio a Dacia Maraini, Il Tempo, 11 – 9 – 2007 Carlotta De Leo, La Dacia dei ciliegi, Corriere della sera, 11-9-2007
• Antonello Antonelli, Giovanni Guaccero et Alquimia – Musica per le montagne, World music magazine, Marzo –aprile 2005
• Girolamo De Simone, Musica per le montagne, Konesequenz, 2005
• Raffaele Bella, Sull’altro “iato” della musica – Incontro con Giovanni Guaccero, Il Manifesto/Alias, 20 – 11- 2004 read
• Biagio Coscia, Biagio Coscia ascolta: Musica per le Montagne, Officina HCE, 2004
• Ettore Scandale, ...IATO! Improvvisazione libera, ZNC presente in atto, Marzo 2003
• Giuseppina Rossi, Pasolini, sei poesie per sei compositori, Il Manifesto, 9 maggio 2002
• Virgilio Celletti, Placido incanta l'ateneo raccontando Pasolini, Avvenire, 17-4-2002
• Lorenzo Tozzi, Torna Pasolini rievocato da Placido, Il Tempo, 17-4-2002
• Valeria Donelli, L'anima incantata, Il Gazzettino, 21-7-2000 (on Musiche per Quadri Friulani)
• Igor Fiorini, Flutedance, Falaut, Gennaio - Marzo 2000
• Dino Tarantino, Domenico e Giovanni Guaccero nelle edizioni musicali, Gargantua, Ottobre -novembre1999
• Enzo Siciliano, Voce di storia e di natura, La Repubblica (Il Venerdì), 30-7-1999 read
• Margherita Goberti, Estate Ferrara, sette via. La Nuova Ferrara, 23-6-1997 (on Pincelada)
• Claudio Vedovati, Le colpe dei padri secondo Guaccero, Il Manifesto, 18-6-1995 (on Salmo metropolitano read
• [senza firma], Folkstudio contemporanea, e ora la parola agli strumenti, Il Tempo, 1-2-1995
• Erasmo Valente, In musica e versi l'omaggio all'utopia ansiosa del nuovo, L'Unità, 12-5-1993 (on Proiezioni Future)
• [senza firma], Genesi rivissuta su testo poetico, La Sicilia, 24- 5- 1991(on Extra me aliqua res)
• Giorgio Prosperi, Un'Astrazione fantastica sul Filottete di Sofocle, Il Tempo, maggio 1991
• Ettore Zocaro, Il Filottete recluso, La Sicilia, 24- 5- 1991
• Marco Caporali, Canzone brasiliana spiegata in due lezioni-concerto, L’Unità, 17-4-1990