Biography

I am a musicologist and violinist who specialises in early modern Italian music. My work blends historical-theoretical reflections with interpretative-practical approaches. As a scholar, I am interested in the relationship between compositional thought and sound ideals; as a practitioner, I focus on the historically informed performance of chamber music repertoires.

I am currently working on two multi-stranded projects. The first is a comprehensive historical and analytical study of Arcangelo Corelli’s poetics of violin music as well as the social and cultural structures that shaped his musical activities and thought. The second is a study of sound ideals and instrumentation in early modern Italian music and the way they affect the interpretation of specific genres of chamber (Alessandro Stradella), theatre (Tomaso Albinoni) and church (Giovanni Gabrieli) instrumental music.

Before entering the academia, I was at various points in my life a freelance violinist for  period-instrument orchestras, the leader of a one-to-a-part ensemble specialising in music of the Spanish Golden Age, a musical entrepreneur and educator, and a doctoral student at the University of Oxford. These varied activities are reflected in my publications, which 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), to a recorded anthology of late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century violin music (2007).

I was educated in Milan (BMus), Cambridge, Mass. (MMus) and Oxford (MSt and DPhil). I studied modern violin with Felice Cusano and Zinaida Gilels, historical violin with Phoebe Carrai and Manfredo Kraemer, and historical musicology with Laurence Dreyfus. I have won numerous awards, including a grant of the Fondazione Academia Montis Regalis Onlus 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 the University of Oxford for conducting archival research in Bologna (2008).

Formerly a Lecturer in Music at Jesus College, Lincoln College and Magdalen College of Oxford University, I am now Senior Lecturer in Music and Director of Performance at Liverpool Hope University. At Hope, I teach undergraduate and postgraduate students in musicology and performance. In addition, I oversee all performance activities across the Department of Music, working in partnership with the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra and other organisations.

I am the Director of the international Cornerstone Arts Festival and of Early Music as Education (EMAE), a registered charity that promotes the value of early music as a tool for cultural, social and economic development across the globe.

 

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