Giovanni Sollima

Giovanni Sollima was born in Palermo in 1962 into a family of musicians. He studied in Palermo, Salzburg and Stuttgart, and, still a teenager, embarked on a brilliant international career of cellist, collaborating with Claudio Abbado, Martha Argerich, Jorg Demus and Giuseppe Sinopoli. Alongside the soloist career, his creative curiosity led him to explore new frontiers in the field of composition: his unmistakable style is characterized by contaminations between different genres: minimalism, rock, electronic and ethnic music from all over the Mediterranean area, with echoes of ancient and baroque music, on the basis of a thorough classical training. Sollima uses in his creations western and eastern acoustic instruments and electrical and electronic tools, mixed with others of his own invention, such as in Aquilarco, and others especially made for him, like the tenor violin present in the paintings of Caravaggio and an ice-cello that in the winter of 2007 he played at 3200 meters above sea level, in an igloo' theater built in the glacier of Val Senales. His music has been played by classical performers such as Yo-Yo Ma, Riccardo Muti, Daniele Gatti, Gidon Kremer, Mischa Maisky, Viktoria Mullova, Ruggero Raimondi, Mario Brunello, Bruno Canino, Yuri Bashmet, Katia Labeque, the Berliner Philharmoniker, La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Il Giardino Armonico, and the pop stars Patti Smith, Larry Coryell, Mauro Pagani, Stefano Bollani, Elisa (protagonist of his opera Ellis Island). For cinema and television he composed for Marco Tullio Giordana (I cento passi, La meglio gioventù), Peter Greenaway (The Tulse Luper Suitcases and Nightwatching), John Turturro (Evidence for a Sicilian Tragedy), Lasse Gjertsen (Daydream). For the theater he wrote and performed music for directors such as Robert Wilson, Alessandro Baricco, Peter Stein. In 2006 Peter Greenaway chose his music for a large installation staged in Amsterdam in the fourth centenary of Rembrandt. In the dance field he collaborated with many great choreographers, such as Karole Armitage and Carolyn Carlson who, at the Venice Biennale, made him play on stage, among the dancers, using his scenic charisma. As a soloist, or with different instrumental groups, he performed his compositions all over the world, from Carnegie Hall in New York to La Scala in Milan, the Queen Elizabeth Hall and the Wigmore Hall in London, the Tokyo Summer Festival, the Salle Gaveau in Paris, the Ravenna Festival, Parco della Musica in Rome, the International Festival of Istanbul, the Caikowskij Hall of Moscow, the opening of the Italian Pavilion at Expo 2010 in Shanghai, the Kronberg Festival in Frankfurt, the Venice Biennale, Kunstfest of Weimar, the Festival of Amsterdam, and also tours in the UK, Holland, the U.S., Canada, Russia, Japan, Australia. Prestigious venues, as well as alternative ones, nearer to the younger audience, such as the Knitting Factory in New York, a real underground temple, when the Pulitzer Prize Justin Davidson describes him as "The Jimi Hendrix of the Cello". Remarkable is the cello performance in the Sahara Desert and the one underwater in a Sicilian' gebbia (a tank for irrigation' water) for an installation by Antonio Di Mino. The Municipality of Milan commissioned to Sollima the sound theme for Expo 2015. Right now he is writing the music for the next movie by Carlos Saura. Among the many CD, we remember Aquilarco for Point Music/Polygram (on invitation by Philip Glass, now in Egea's catalogue), Works and When We Were Trees for Sony, Neapolitain Concertos in collaboration with I Turchini of Antonio Florio for Glossa, Caravaggio and 100 Cellos for Egea. He plays a cello Francesco Ruggeri (Cremona, 1679) and, since 2010, he's been teaching at the Academy of Santa Cecilia, where he was recently awarded the title of Academician. Sollima publishes his work at Casa Musicale Sonzogno of Milan.