Guido Mallardi

Biography

Guido Mallardi is an Italian pianist, composer and researcher, winner of On Piano Creativity Permanent International Contest and recognised for both his fine playing and his interesting compositions by such famous figures as Alexander Lonquich, Dickran Atamian, Héctor Ulises Passarella, Rodion Shchedrin, Frederic Rzewski, Piero Rattalino and Yoshiko Okada.

His repertoire includes music from Bach to Ligeti as well as his own music (experimental works and innovative jazz arrangements), and also music composed by non-musicians and amateur musicians through the Brainarm Full Compositional Coaching, which is his main achievement in the musical research field.

Since 2016 he is an appointed juror of the WPTA International Piano Competition (member of the Alink-Argerich Foundation) and starting from 2018 he has become President of WPTA UK.

He studied at Conservatoire of Fermo then was awarded a scholarship in 2000; also studied in Conservatoire of Milan, Incontri col Maestro Academy of Imola and École de Musique Mozart in Bruxelles. Finally he graduated in 2006 from Fermo Conservatoire in piano (Mmus) and in compostion (Bmus).

He studied composition with Marco Di Bari, harmony, analysis and counterpoint with Fulvio Delli Pizzi, analysis with Michele Ignelzi, while his piano teachers have included Piero Rattalino, Enrico Belli, Fausto Bongelli and Donella Sabatini. In parallel he also attended piano masterclasses of such great masters as Alexander Lonquich, Boris Petrushansky, Jörg Demus, Franco Scala, Massimiliano Damerini, François-Joël Thiollier, Pierluigi Camicia and Giovanni Valentini; also Pier Narciso Masi and Alain Meunier for chamber music.

His performances in Italy and abroad made him collecting great success as a very communicative and charismatic musician.

In 1998 he was amongst the first pianists to perform in Italy Gyorgy Ligeti's works for two pianos.

He is passionate about improvisation and experimentation and has worked in genres ranging from contemporary music, modern jazz and ambient/psychedelic. These experiences have led him to develop his own style, a kind of inside-impressionism characterized by minimal diatonic constructivism. An example of this is in his work Dentro, which is in the catalogues of Orléans Concours International de musique XX siècle.

Where Dentro is sacred inspired, delicate and suspended, the collection Prophandances is very colorful, rhythmical and iconoclastic, taking elements of acid-jazz to create a large form genre out of it, and the most interesting example of this kind of music is A Sweet Call.

Among his works are various ensemble and several piano solo pieces.

During the years 2002 to 2004 he took part to Alexander Lonquich's and Marco Di Stefano’s theatre companies, working as a pianist, improviser, composer and actor. In 2004 he wrote and performed some arrangements of famous songs of the early 1900 for the theatre Piccolo Re di Roma, and in 2018 he started a collaboration with the sculptor Matthias Leeck.

A complete musician with eclectic artistic personality but also an inventor and a researcher of new methods to teach as well as composition music systems, his formation is full of experiences with various disciplines and philosophies before his definitive discovery of the first century Christianism.

He has taught piano, theory, composition, harmony, arrangement, counterpoint, improvisation in a number of music schools in Italy for approximately 15 years, developing and launching in 2008 a technique he called Analogic Method, which is focused on developing consciousness through music and tries to describes music through a development of symbols and archetypes, for application in composition, analysis and performance ("from inner-world to outward” is the motto he uses to define it in simple words). This type of approach led him to invent and develop a very helpful system of symbols he called PTS  (Piano Technique Stenography) to assist pianists and students with approaching a piece of music and learning it without technical mistakes.

In 2012 as well as founding a school known as the Accademia Professionale di Musica,   he started making public demonstrations of the Brainarm technique, which gives non-musicians tools to compose high quality music without requiring that they have any prior knowledge of theory or technique.

Going against a common belief that it is only possible to compose good quality music once someone is already highly versed in theory and usually an extremely accomplished pianist, the Brainarm technique is for anyone: a way of empowering everyone who wants to write music, no matter what their level of musical knowledge. Interestingly, despite taking advantage of the instrumental technique and the experience of the tutor, no influence comes from him during the composition process.

To listen to some music composed by beginners and non-musicians, please visit the music section in www.brainarm.com.

Guido Mallardi's music is distributed on most popular online platforms.