This year’s accordion teacher is a newcomer to Django in June. Please welcome…Giorgio Albanese.
Born 30 years ago in Ostuni (Puglia) in southern Italy, Giorgio has represented Italy three times at the prestigious World Accordion Championships and won more than 30 national and international musical competitions, becoming one of the youngest accordion players with the most awards. In 2009 he gained a degree in Jazz Music at the Conservatory of Music “Niccolò Piccinni,” Bari and in 2012 he specialized in Contemporary Languages with focus in Composition and Improvisation at the Conservatory of Music, “Nino Rota”, Monopoli (BA). In 2017 he completed a master’s degree in Classical and Contemporary Accordion, where, inspired by the works of Pauline Oliveros and John Cage, he composed one of the first examples of contemporary compositions for accordion and electronica.
He has also been actively involved in a wide variety of musical projects that span traditional as well as more contemporary jazz, world and classical contemporary music, working across multiple disciplines such as theatre, dance and cinema.
Since January 2018 he’s been studying Jazz Composition and Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music and is part of the advanced performance program at Berklee Global Jazz Institute where he is studying with legends of contemporary jazz, such as Danilo Perez, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, John Patitucci, Ben Street, Adam Cruz.
Here he is playing completely alone, playing the Charlie Parker classic, Billy’s Bounce. Phew!