At the age of five, Accursio Antonio Cortese began studying music and the organ with his grandfather, D. Imbornone. At the V. Bellini Conservatory (now A. Scarlatti) in Palermo, he earned a Piano Diploma with O. Buogo and a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Composition with honors and special mention under M. Betta. He earned a Master's degree in Composition with I. Fedele at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia with top honors. He specialized in film music composition with L. Bacalov and opera with G. Battistelli, both at the Accademia Chigiana in Siena. He studied conducting with C. Caruso, choral music and choral conducting with M. Ghiglione. He furthered his knowledge of jazz music by attending international seminars in Siena and at Roccella Jazz. He has a substantial catalog of symphonic, chamber, sacred, operatic, and film compositions. His music has been performed in Italy, the USA, Argentina, Finland, Russia, Switzerland, France, and Romania, in prestigious venues. His music is published by Suvini Zerboni - Sugar Music (Milan), Sconfinarte Editions (Brescia), and Isuku Verlag (Munich).

Writing the liner notes to this album necessarily compels me to begin with a preamble which fully complieswith the music and renditions it contains: listening to a discographical work is an active act of creation, the moment when we choose to shift our point of observation towards an imaginative reality that, once experienced, appears more authentic and faithful than everyday's ordinariness. This record is intimately aimed at a cultural elite, aware and solid, not necessarily to be identified in guitar confraternities , capable of seizing and elaborating the connections and the sentimental, substantial correspondences between the sound of the guitar and the cultural facts the author decided to express through it. The title «Luminaria» recalls the feeling of a Van Gogh's Night, where lights do not seem to belong to the city anymore, but rather to nature. The author himself says about these works for guitar: «the landscape is nocturnal, we're moving within gilardinian poetics, the pieces are no pianistic milestones, nor are they orchestral solos; they're feeble village lights at the procession for a saint, which do not illuminate the night, and yet make it exist.» These are works complying with the poetics of «places» and of «memory», both converging in a third one represented by «distance». This music deals with an «elsewhere», referring to «here and now» rather than to a spacial acception, there's no irony, magic or enchanted realism, but a vision forged in architectures dense with a thought that fiercely invokes this very «hic et nunc», recalling the powerful verse by Montale to burn now , no other is my meaning. Kevin SwierkoszLenart entrusts these pieces to a young guitarist who has all the qualities to receive and elaborate the author's intimate perceptions; Giovanni Martinelli, dedicatory of these oevres, has one gift distinguishing him from most of his generation's performers: the precocious ability to observe the many facets of things and of the world from above, whose vision he renders deeply and very clearly through the guitar. Thus, both special and rare seems the artistic alliance between author and performer, as if they showed the way one another, and the composer's ideas are embraced by the guitarist with such natural predisposition.

The album consists of five triptychs written for solo guitar in the 20th century by composers representing various areas of musical culture. The album opens with a work by Tansman, which references the compositions of Frédéric Chopin. Rodrigo's composition strictly follows his characteristic musical language, based on stylizations of dances and motifs drawn from Spanish tradition. Torroba's suite is a tribute to the music of the Castilian region, an emotional, virtuosic work with playful elements. The miniatures by Henz, with their dreamlike, meditative character, bear the mark of the versatile German composer's personal style, whose musical language combines elements of expressionism, twelve-tone technique, neoclassicism, and tonality. The final work on the album is by Barrios Mangoré, the Paraguayan guitarist and most prominent composer of his country, whose piece borders between the sacred and the profane, containing elements of Baroque virtuosity. Andrzej Grygier is one of the most outstanding classical guitarists of his generation, a laureate of prestigious guitar competitions worldwide, and this album confirms his virtuosic skill and musical sensitivity.

The tracklist includes the presence of an A side dedicated to the classical guitar with the songs Clinker and Rebound (working names) and a B side, dedicated to the electric guitar, with the songs Insenature and Sostegni (working names). The idea of ?making the vinyl object also the subject of musical writing was central to the conception of the project and sees it as the protagonist beyond the mere means of fixation of the work.

This program, dedicated to the melodies of Ernest Chausson (1855-1899), celebrates the music of this worthy representative of the French mélodie style. Cyril ACHARD (guitar and adaptations) and Kevin Norwood (vocals), two musicians with diverse influences (jazz, classical, early music, etc.), share a predilection for musical expression in it's purest and most unadorned form. Their passion for the beautiful melodies and harmonic soaring characteristic of this bygone musical movement led them to pay tribute to the most enigmatic and misunderstood of all "melodists." As jazz musicians who practice improvisation and readily engage in reinterpretation, they find this program an ideal playground. The unique character of this duo is based on a work of adaptation, even "reinvention" in places, interspersed with improvised sections, allowing the listener to oscillate between two musical universes. Nostalgie du Ciel offers a unique take on the composer's melodies through this original arrangement for guitar and vocals. The album, recorded in an Alpine church, strives to recreate the natural acoustics of the setting, allowing the listener to perceive the sound as it was generated at the source.

Michael Finnissy's output for the guitar spans almost 60 years of his career and represents an enormous contribution to the repertoire of the instrument from one of Britain's most significant composers. Published a few days before Finnissy's 80th birthday, this bold and ambitious album celebrates this milestone by bringing together all of his works for solo guitar and guitar ensemble for the first time, in performances by Finnissy's collaborators and led by new music virtuoso and tireless guitar explorer Sam Cave.

2011 release from the British guitarist. Clearing Customs is based on an approximately 75 minute long, graphic structural model by which the most diverse types of musical events are linked together along a time line. A notated instrumental loop which can be heard in different versions in the course of the piece, serves as a thematic filler between these heterogeneous passages. Fred Frith's choice of instruments was in accordance with the classic Jazz criteria: strings, skins, breath and, additionally, circuitry, meaning electronics. Frith follows the lead taken by the concept of the British theatre maker Peter Brook, who tries to integrate artists with completely different cultural experiences into an ensemble. Intakt.