Richard Savino
Guitarist/Lutist Richard Savino has been a featured performer and concerto soloist with many groups and on many concert stages including the Frick Collection; Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY); the Boston Early Music Festival International Series; Tage Alter Musik, Regensburg; London Early Music Network; Shrine To Music Museum, the San Francisco/Seattle/ Vancouver/Victoria Early Music Societies, and the Portland and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestras. In recent years he has been a featured artist, faculty member, and judge at numerous festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe including the International Guitar Festival in Gargnano, Italy; the Guitar Foundation of America Festival; and the National Guitar Summer Workshop.
In 1995 he was Visiting Artistic Director of the Aston Magna Academy at Rutgers University, and from 1994 to 1997 he was Coordinator of Performance Practice at the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire. Since 1987 Mr. Savino has directed the CSU Summer Arts Guitar and Lute Institute and is presently codirector of Ensemble El Mundo, which will perform the featured opening concert at the 1998 Berkeley Early Music Festival. In 1982 Mr. Savino was chosen twice by Maestro Andres Segovia to perform in master-classes at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland, and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
In 1984 and 1986 he was chosen to perform in the International Segovia Fellowship Competition sponsored by New York University, and in 1985 he became the first solo guitarist to be chosen a winner at the Artists International Carnegie Recital Hall Debut Competition. Mr. Savino has secured grants from the National Endowment of the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, California State University, and has recently been chosen to appear on the CAC touring roster by the California Arts Council. An active accompanist as well as soloist, he has performed in recitals with singers Paul Hillier, Andrea Fullington, Judith Nelson , and Susan Narucki. His recordings include the first period instrument versions of Luigi Boccherini’s guitar quintets (3 CDs), Mauro Giuliani’s Grand Quintetto and Johann Kaspar Mertz’s Bardenklänge for the Harmonia Mundi record label, all of which have received great critical acclaim. In addition to receiving a 10 du Rèpertoire, the Parisian journal has also placed his Boccherini recordings in their “Great Discoveries” category, which they deem as essential to any classical music collection. His recent releases include a duo recording with British violinist Monica Huggett, featuring virtuoso sonatas by Paganini and Giuliani on the HM label, and a collection of sonatas by Ferdinando Carulli on the Naxos label.
Most recently he has recorded an extensive collection of eighteenth-century guitar music from Mexico by Santiago de Murcia (Koch International) and a collection of monody by Barbara Strozzi with soprano Emanuela Galli and Ensemble Gallilei (Stradivarius, Milano). In January 1999 the NPR/BBC program “The World” featured the Murcia CD as its “Global Hit.” In the coming year Mr. Savino will record music of Giovanni Legrenzi with El Mundo, of which he is codirector; the first period instrument versions of the Boccherini Guitar Symphonia; the Op. 30 Concerto for Guitar by Mauro Giuliani; and music by Biagio Marini with Monica Huggett.
Mr. Savino has appeared on the CBS and PBS television networks, has been heard in recital on National Public Radio’s Performance Today, Morning Pro Musica, Off The Record, England’s BBC, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s Music from Montreal and Music from Vancouver programs. In 1995 he was a contributing author to the Cambridge University Press Studies in Performance Practice series and is presently editing the complete works of Fernando Sor for Editions Chanterelle and a collection of secular monodies by Francesca Caccini for Indiana University Press.
Mr. Savino has studied with Oscar Ghiglia, Eliot Fisk, and has received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY at Stony Brook where he studied with Jerry Willard. He is presently Professor of Music at the California State University at Sacramento where in 1994 he was the first member of the music faculty to be awarded an Outstanding and Exceptional sabbatical, and in 1996 he became only the seventh CSUS faculty to receive the prestigious Semester Leave Research Grant Award.
