Teaching experiences

I have been teaching since I was 19, first modern cello, then viola da gamba, baroque cello and a lot of early ensemble music. Lately, theoretical subjects have been added: performance practice and treatises, musical semiography, history of bowed instruments etc. I do not like teaching in the solitude of private lessons, so I have always sought the company of institutions: starting from the brave School of Music in Empoli, to the Accademia Musicale in Florence, then the Conservatory of Bari and - for twenty years - that of Vicenza, I am currently teaching at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole  and at the Conservatory Giovanni Battista Martini in Bologna. In addition to the instrumental teaching itself, every year I propose a major didactic-concert project on polyphonic music of the 16th and early 17th century that involves all the students of the Early Music Department and makes them get to know and love composers such as Willaert, the two Gabrieli, Banchieri, Lasso, and the two Ferrabosco (listen to our concerts in this playlist). I have also taught a few extra and advanced courses, for example in Urbino, Izmir, Poitiers, Syracuse, Forum Alte Musik Vorarlberg and, in more peaceful years, at the Tchaikovsky Conservatory in Moscow.
Feeling the urgency of an exchange with colleagues and a meeting with all those involved with my instrument, in 2011 I created the Giornata Italiana della Viola da Gamba (Italian Day of the Viola da Gamba), awarded a medal by the President of the Italian Republic, which in 2024 reaches its seventh edition and brings together violists from all over Italy and beyond. In the years 2018-2021 this resulted in the three-year European Viola da gamba Network Project in which 6 European conservatories with prestigious viola da gamba classes collaborate for a shared teaching network that survives beyond its end thanks to the platform Violanet.
My teaching experience has also led to a method, L'arte di suonare la viola da gamba (‘The Art of Playing the Viola da gamba’), which approaches the student from the very first lessons with the performance of musically satisfying pieces from the ancient repertoire, in the belief that just as water teaches how to swim, music teaches how to play.