Paolo Ferrara

Paolo Ferrara was born in Milano in 1958 and studied Composition with M° Ruggero MAGHINI and M° Carlo PINELLI and Orchestra Conduction with M° Carlo DAMEVINO, obtaining the highest degrees and graduating with honours. Participated in specialization courses of the Chigiana Academy of Siena with M° Franco FERRARA. He conducted numerous concerts throughout Italy and also abroad with the Orchestra of Turin Conservatoire, the Sinfonica Abruzzese Orchestra, “I Solisti Aquilani” Orchestra, “Carlo Felice” Theatre of Genova, and with San Remo’s Symphonic Orchestra where in 1987 he won the Third Prize at the “Gino Marinuzzi” International Musical Contest for Young Conductors. He conducted the Ensemble Europeo Antidogma Musica in important European cities and abroad, such as Ginevra, Santiago de Compostela, Alicante, Las Palmas, Amsterdam, Bucharest, Paris—Pompidou Center—,Torino, L’Aquila, Rome, Alessandria, Tokyo, Helsinki, Melbourne and Oslo. >From 1994 to 1998 and 2004-2006, has been invited by the Kansai Philharmonic Orchestra and the Telemann Chamber Orchestra of Osaka, Japan, repeatedly getting remarkable success. In 1996 he was guest-conductor of the Symphonic Orchestra of Porto Alegre in Brazil. He recorded several CD (Stravinsky’s “Histoire du Soldat”, a repertoire of Italian Opera with the Kyoto Symphony Orchestra for the RCA-Victor label and others). In 2003, he conducted the University of Georgia Symphony Orchestra (UGASO) in Atlanta, United States, and in 2004 conducted the Century Philharmonic Orchestra of Osaka, Japan. He is professor of Harmony and Counterpoint, as well as Orchestra Direction at the Antonio Vivaldi Conservatoire of Alessandria.

Frédéric Zigante

Frédéric Zigante has become one of the major concert guitarists to emerge over the last twenty years and his international reputation rests as much on research and teaching as it does on performing and making records. Indeed, Mr. Zigante’s whole approach to his art is quite unlike what might be commonly expected of a guitarist. Mr. Zigante was born in France and grew up in Turin, in the north of Italy. He studied guitar with Alirio Diaz, Alexandre Lagoya and Ruggero Chiesa, and was awarded his diploma at the College of Music in Milan. He was still very young when he embarked upon a concert career which was to take him well beyond the confines of his native Italy, to Great Britain, Hungary, Greece, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Japan, Holland, China, Poland, Norway, Finland and Singapore. Mr. Zigante has performed at such major classical venues as Suntory Hall in Tokyo and the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam. Mr. Zigante has recorded widely, both for such labels as Frequenz, Arts, Stradivarius, Adda and Naxos and for radio broadcasting organizations such as the BBC, Radio France, Radio Suisse Romande, Rundfunk der DDR and the Rai in Italy. Both his playing and writings have won him the attention of a number of specialist publications throughout the world, (Classical Guitar in Britain, Guitar Review in the USA, Gitarre & Laute in Germany, Gendai Guitar in Japan and Il Fronimo and GuitArt in Italy), and he has been the subject of articles and appeared on their front covers many times. Mr.Zigante is renowned as a specialist in the repertoire of the early nineteenth century, which he plays on a guitar built by Luis Panormo in London in 1831. He has delved deep into matters of performance practice and style, which has led him to write to many studies and articles in the specialist press. His recordings of the complete works of Paganini for solo guitar, of Le Rossiniane by Mauro Giuliani, of the works for voice and guitar by Ludwig Spohr, and unpublished items by Napoleon Coste have all led to such awards as the prize of the First Italian Guitar Convention, ( Primo Convegno Italiano Di Chitarra ) in 1996 for the best recording of the year. Mr.Zigante is no less interested in the development of the guitar in contemporary music and has performed a number of major works for the instrument composed in the twentieth century, such as his world première of Franco Donatoni’s Marches II, Alexandre Tansman’s Passacaille, Boris Asafiev’s Concerto and Italian première of Frank Martin’s Poèmes de la mort, Hika by Leo Brouwer and Electric Counterpoint by Steve Reich. Mr.Zigante was also responsible for the rediscovery of the Concertino pour Guitare et Orchestre by Alexandre Tansman, of which he gave the world première concert performance in 1995 and subsequently produced the first recording. He has also recorded the complete works for guitar by Villa Lobos and is the first to have made a careful study of the original manuscripts in preparation for his recording. His research activities inspired Editions Max Eschig to offer him the task of a new edition of Villa Lobos’ complete works for the guitar. During the preparatory work on the original manuscripts Frédéric Zigante discovered a totally unknown work by the Brazilian composer: the Valse-Choro that was initially conceived for a primitive version of the Suite populaire brésilienne. Mr.Zigante also supervises the publication of a series of scores for guitar with Edition Max Eschig in Paris and a series of Cds with the Stradivarius Record Company in Milan, both of which carry his name. His activities include teaching at the Trieste, Alessandria and Milan Conservatory, together with various master classes both in Italy and around the world (Switzerland, France, Spain, China and Japan most recently).

Eric Franceries

An international guitarist, he performs in concert as soloist as well as in chamber music, from Japan to the United States, passing through all the countries of Europe. Alexandre Lagoya said of him: "Éric Franceries masters his art with sensitivity. He has always been a performer who knew how to combine his technical possibilities in the service of a high musical spirituality. Eric Franceries crosses the generations and the borders of the six strings, becoming over the years the crossroads of the classic..." (Guitarist Classic Acoustic, special edition n° 5).
As of 2018, Franceries is a classical guitar teacher at the CRD (Conservatoire à Rayonnement Départemental) of Villeurbanne.
He also plays Argentine tango with the bandoneonist Jérémy Vannereau[1] in the "Duo Buenos Aires",[2] and experiments with a repertoire of world music within the "PepperCelt" ensemble, with the violinist-singer Pierrem Thinet[3] and percussionist Baptiste Romano.

Simone Fontanelli

Since winning the prestigious VI. Salzburg International Mozart Composition Competition in 1995, Simone Fontanelli has been considered as one of the most authentic contemporary musical personalities.
As composer and conductor he has been invited to many international Festivals in Italy, Austria, England, Spain, Hungary, Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, Kazachistan, Israel, Taiwan. Thailand and USA. He has always received the highest praise for his works. His compositions are performed worldwide by greatest artists. In 2011 his children opera "Es war ein einmal Stück Holz" (“Once Upon A Time There was A piece Of Wood”) after C. Collodi’s Pinocchio, commissioned by the Cologne Gürzenich-Orchester and by the Kinderoper, was a great success and currently is still performed in different European countries.
Fontanelli has received commissions from several international institutions, festivals and performing artists. From 2003 to 2009 Mr. Fontanelli was the Director of the Gamper Festival of Contemporary Music (Brunswick, ME - USA). Since 2000 he has been on the faculty of the Mozarteum University in Salzburg where he teaches Contemporary Music Performance and, currently, is the Director of the Institut für Neue Musik. He has been invited to give masterclasses and lectures at many important universities in Europe, Asia and USA. Since 2023 he has been on the faculty of the Accademia Chigiana in Siena.
Mr. Fontanelli was born in 1961 in Milan. He studied guitar and graduated in Composition from the Conservatorio of Milano in 1989. He also studied Philosophy at the University of Milan.

Francisco Bernier

Considered by critics as one of the world’s leading classical guitarists of his generation, Francisco Bernier has gone on to forge a successful and prize-winning career throughout the years. His achievements led him to perform in over 40 countries around the globe, in prestigious venues such as the Salle Cortot and the Mogador Theatre in Paris, the Salle Corum in Montpellier, the Grand Theatre in Bordeaux, Oji Hall in Tokyo, the Kyoto Concert Hall, the Hermitage Museum of Saint Petersburg, Teatro Maestranza in Seville, Teatro Comunale in Alessandria, Merkin Hall in New York, Hall of the O.E.A (Organization of American States) in Washington D.C., and the Zellerbach Hall in San Francisco, to name a few.
​Finalist in the Concert Artist Guild of New York and recipient of more than twenty international prizes including the “Michele Pittaluga” Competition, Francisco Bernier has performed with many orchestras, such as the Camerata of Saint Petersburg, the Manchester Symphony Orchestra, the Mediterranean Symphonic Orchestra, the
Symphonic Orchestra of Vallés, the Symphonic Orchestra of Huelva and the Berkeley Symphony of San Francisco conducted by Kent Nagano.
He began his musical studies at the Conservatorio Superior de Música in Seville and he then moved to France to continue his musical studies at the Ecole Normale "Alfred Cortot" in Paris under the direction of Maestro Alberto Ponce. He received his Superior Diploma of Execution and Concert Performer with distinction by means of a unanimous decision by the jury.