about me

Violinist, musicologist and educator

I am a violinist, musicologist and educator from Sardinia, who specialises in Italian and Italianate music from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries.

My work blends historical-theoretical reflections with interpretative-practical approaches. As a theoretician, I am interested in the historical relationship between compositional thought and sound ideals; as a practitioner, I focus on the historically informed performance of specific genres of chamber, church and theatre music.

My publications – whether scholarly essays or non-commercial recordings – attempt to show how, within their creative endeavours, early modern musicians negotiated the relationship between composition and performance.

Early Music as Education

I am the Artistic and Educational Director of Early Music as Education (EMAE) – a Liverpool-based charity that promotes the value of early music as a tool for cultural, social and economic development – and of his flagship ensemble, the Early Music Youth Orchestra (EMYO).

I am a well-published author and an independent recording artist; I regularly perform chamber music and direct from the violin large-scale instrumental and vocal repertoires across Europe, Cuba and as far away as Kenya. Before entering the third sector, I was Lecturer in Music at Magdalen College, Jesus College and Lincoln College of the University of Oxford and subsequently Senior Lecturer in Music, Director of Performance Studies and Director of the Cornerstone Arts Festival at Liverpool Hope University.

At various other points in my life, I was a freelance violinist for period-instrument orchestras, the leader of a one-to-a-part ensemble specialising in music of the Spanish Golden Age and an entrepreneur-cum-educator in Italy.

DEGREES

I have degrees in music from the University of Oxford (DPhil and MSt), the Longy School of Music of Bard College in Boston (MMus) and the Milan Conservatoire (BMus) as well as a PGCE in Academic Practice and several other qualifications.

I studied historical musicology with Laurence Dreyfus, early violin with Phoebe Carrai and Manfredo Kraemer, modern violin with Felice Cusano and the late Zinaida Gilels.

publications

My earliest publications range from a CD-ROM on the cultural and musical heritage of the Crown of Spain in the sixteenth century (2000) to a book on music education in early childhood (2007) and a recorded anthology of eighteenth-century violin music (2007).

More recently, I have recorded widely and published on seventeenth-century music (2010–2019), provided the original idea and soundtrack for Frank Cottrell-Boyce’s BBC Radio 4 drama How to Flee from Sorrow (2016), and written a book-length study of Arcangelo Corelli and the Poetics of Violin Music (forthcoming).

awards

I have won numerous awards, including a scholarship of the Fondazione Academia Montis Regalis for advanced training in historical orchestral practices (1995), a visiting scholarship at the Faculty of Music and Centre for Music & Science of Cambridge University (2004) and a Scatcherd European Scholarship from Oxford University to conduct archival research in Bologna (2008).

I have also been Plumer Visiting Fellow at St Anne’s College, University of Oxford (2018) and Visiting Professor at the University of Havana, St Jerome College, Cuba (2021–2023).