Matteo Rigotti

Eclectic musician, he composes, plays, teaches.

He has always tried to combine a multifaceted activity that was not linked exclusively to the aspect of instrumentalist, remaining deliberately far from commonplaces and circles often associated with guitar.He owes his training to Mariano Andreolli.

His career has always developed through two channels, that of concertism and that of composition, inseparable from each other.

Although participation in national and international competitions for both execution and composition has always brought excellent results, the idea of competition has never been primary in his musical career. The very conception that in such a subjective art a sort of ranking could exist is completely opposite to his conception of music, essentially understood as a state of being.

His work is characterized by the interdisciplinarity of the different expressions of art and aspires to seek and find through his own art the common synthesis between the various worlds of contemporaneity.

He took the certificate in guitar at the Conservatory of Trento and then he received the Degree in Classical Guitar with a specialization in Chamber Music with full marks at the same conservatory.

He attended several masterclasses with guitarists of international fame as Oscar Ghiglia, Massimo Lonardi, Andrea Dieci, Lorenzo Micheli, Giulio Tampalini, Piero Bonaguri, Paolo Cherici, Florindo Baldissera, Leopoldo Saracino, Simone Fontanelli, Matteo Mela, Leo Brouwer, Eliot Fisk.

He studied with Giulio Tampalini at the Guitar Academy in Brescia deepening the solo repertoire and since 2010 he had been studying for three years at Giulio Regondi Academy in Milan with Andrea Dieci continuing his mastery for soloists.

He focuses his activity as soloist and also in chamber music, playing in various ensembles and performs in numerous concerts in Italy and abroad.

During his career he had the opportunity to perform in Bosnia Herzegovina, Kosovo, Serbia, Croatia, Germany, Switzerland, Russia, United States, United Arab Emirates.

He also had the privilege of accompanying celebrities from the world of arts and show business as David Grossman and Gigi Proietti (IDEM, Verona).

In 2023 the cd "La Storia di Morgano" was released for the Baryton record company - Opera for soprano and four guitars in which he participated as a guitarist.

in May 2024 he held a one-week masterclass at the Academy of Arts - University of Banja Luka, in Bosnia, working with the class of guitarist Natasa Jokic.

He plays a guitar by the English luthier Philip Woodfield.

 He is interested in music beyond the instrumental area and during the years of his education he deepened composition study with Nicola Straffelini.

Meeting Nadir Vassena was crucial, with whom first he studied at the Master of Advanced Studies in Music Composition at the Musikhochschule in Lugano in Switzerland and then at the Master of Arts in Music Composition and Theory. In that course he perfectioned also orchestration with Giovanni Verrando and electronic techniques with Sylviane Sapir and graduated with full marks.

His musical research uses the timbre as a fundamental element with the consequent interest in electronic music as one of the means to manipulate the sound. Occasionally he takes classes from Luca Richelli to improve this ability and in 2020 he participates as an auditor at the online seminar at Chigiana Academy on Live-Electronics and Sound and Music Computing held by Alvise Vidolin, Nicola Bernardini and Luca Richelli. He also attended courses in sound recording and mixing techniques.

He attended seminars and masterclasses with important personalities of contemporary music as Johannes Schöllhorn, Harrison Birtwistle, Mike Svoboda, Jérôme Combier, Franck Bedrossian, Mats Scheidegger, Helmut Lachenmann, Dmitri Kourliandski, José María Sánchez-Verdú, Pierre Alexandre Tremblay, Betsy Jolas, Antonio Politano, Dieter Mack, Daniela Terranova, Stefano Gervasoni, Ivan Fedele, Michele Tadini, Errollyn Wallen, Matteo Cesari, Tristan Murail, Michele Marco Rossi, Marco Momi, Sonia Bo.

He has always been interested in choir composition and direction and for this reason he is deepening this field with the attendance to different courses like the ones with Marc Kissoczy, Mario Lanaro and following seminars about vocal technique, conductor gestures, repertoire analysis, choral composition, organized by some choir associations as Feniarco, Associazione Cori Piemontesi and AERCO.

Award-winner in national and international composition competitions, he received commissions from Corde d’Autunno Guitar Festival, Eutopia Ensemble, Akartia Trio, Prospettive Musicali Contemporary Concert Season.

From 2016 to 2024 he continued his path of updating and comparing himself with the international compositional world: interacting with composers with other aesthetics is fundamental and stimulates him to increasingly find a highly personal and recognizable language and he took part in several masterclasses: with Giorgio Colombo Taccani at the CdM San Michele; with Marco Momi organized by MotoContrario Ensemble; with Francesco Filidei inside the Urticanti Festival and at least he went to Barcelona as a composer selected for the Mixtur Festival de Nova Creaciò Sonora de Barcelona to follow the Composition and Sound Experimentation Workshop, where he participated to the activities and followed the lessons of the American composer Bethany Younge. But two composers in particular have profoundly influenced his way of composing: Ivan Fedele whose masterclasses he followed for three years and in the last period the meetings with Pierluigi Billone's lessons. From the latter he learned the radical idea of musical timbre as a polarizing energy characterizing form, an aesthetic which he made his own and developed according to a personal language.

His music is performed in Italy and abroad by musicians as Andrea Dieci, Giovanni Maselli, Chris Moy, Federica Canta, Lorenzo Marcolongo, Pauline Tardy, Maura Marinucci, Miguel Angel Pérez Diego, Giulia Vazzoler, EnArmonia Guitar Ensemble, Trio Contrasti, Ensemble Performance, Silvia Cignoli, Quatuor Chouette, Kugel Saxophone Ensemble, Les Amis de Rossini saxophone quartet, Antonio Politano, Margherita Berlanda, Emanuele Dalmaso, Akartia Trio, Samuele Provenzi, Franziska Salker, Parco della Musica Contemporanea Ensemble, New Made Ensemble, Giacomo Cardelli, Elide Sulsenti, Ars Nova Ensemble and in the course of Festivals as Pordenone Guitar Festival, Corde d’Autunno Guitar Festival, SuonoChitarraNatura, Festival Nuovi Orizzonti Sonori, Segovia Guitar Week, Festival Internazionale Musica negli Horti, Associazione Athenaeum, Le strade del Suono Contemporary Music Festival, XVIII World Saxophone Congress, Concerti d'Autunno Pesaro, LuganoMusica, San Vito Musica Contemporanea Festival, Foresty International Music Festival, I Concerti del Conservatorio di Milano, Universität der Künste Berlin, Festival Melologo Bellagio Como 2023, Nak Festival Pamplona, Festival Contrasti, XVI Musikagileak Circuito de Musica Contemporanea, Festival 5 Giornate di Milano, Norval Fondation during World New Music Days in South Africa, Il Suono Contemporary Music Week, IstantaneaUrbana, Vadstena Akademien, Arts Petaluma Center San Diego California, Sound Spaces 2024 Malmo Sweden.

It is also broadcast by some radios dedicated to contemporary music as RadioCemat.

He is also interested in didactical writing and he often works together with musicians for the productions of educational compositions for their instruments. In 2015 his music for guitar was the subject of a degree thesis in the Conservatory of Milan.

With the label Diffusione Arte he published a cd with didactical music for guitar, performed by EnArmonia Guitar Ensemble and by students of Segovia Guitar Academy in Pordenone.

In 2020, his first monographic cd was released for the contemporary record company Stradivarius, which collects compositions for different ensembles that explore the evolution of his musical and aesthetic language.

In October 2023 his second monographic cd "On my way..." was released for the EmaVinci record label. In this work, his aesthetic language finds its definitive mode of expression, through a language that is reflected above all in sound-noise, without however trying to ever detach from a profound aesthetic sense that could preclude its understanding.

In April 2024 he held a composition masterclass at the Puccini Conservatory in Gallarate, on his guitar works and the aesthetic language that distinguishes them.

His works were published by Bèrben, Glissato, Cidea, Sconfinarte, Sinfonica, Armelin, Eufonia Editions. Since 2017 they have been published by DaVinci Editions, Diaphonia Editions, Stradivarius and BabelScores.

Always persuaded that teaching is an enrichment and an integral part of being a musician, he graduated in Instrumental Didactics at the Conservatory of Bolzano in 2009. He is invited as a judge in national and international competitions. He taught classical guitar at the conservatory of Ferrara, Trieste, musical theory and perception at the Verona Conservatory and teaches privately harmony and composition.