Mimmo Malandra

Mimmo Malandra graduated in saxophone from the Conservatorio di Musica Luisa D’Annunzio. He attended masterclasses held by Claude Delangle, Eugène Rousseau, Arno Bornkamp, Francisco Martinez, Alain Crepin and Vincent David, as well as Gaetano Di Bacco, Enzo Filippetti, Giuseppe Berardini, and Fabrizio Paoletti of the prestigious Quartetto di Sassofoni Accademia. He took part in courses with saxophone professors of the Superior Conservatory of Oviedo in Spain and of the Mannheim Musikhochschule in Germany.

Furthermore, he studied at the Accademia Italiana del flauto of Rome, with Jean-Yves Fourmeau, and at the superior academy Città della Musica e del Teatro under the artistic direction of Franco Mezzena. He deepens his studies on the methodology and technology of musical teaching, on anthropos psycho-pedagogical disciplines at the G. Braga Conservatory in Teramo.

He participated in two editions of the European Saxophone Campus with Claude Delangle and in three editions of the International Meeting of Sax in Nova Gorica, Slovenia.

He gave concerts in various formations : saxophone and piano, saxophone and organ, as a soloist, with chamber ensembles, in saxophone ensembles, and in collaboration with many symphony orchestras including the Orchestra Internazionale giovanile Fedele Fenaroli, Orchestra Sinfonica del Teatro Maruccino, The Solisti Aquilani, Orchestra Sinfonica Europea Ars Musica, Orchestra Sinfonica of the Gabriele D’Annunzio University, I Solisti del Teatro Marrucino, Big Band F. Fenaroli, and with the Society Aquilana of concert B.Barattelli. He worked with important orchestra conductors like Donato Renzetti, Jan Latham Koening, Claudio Desderi, Pasquale Veleno, Luigi Piovano, Piero Romano, Antonio Cericola, Angelo Valori, Stefano Fonzi, Antonio Ciacca, Patrick Murray and Gabriele Pezone.

Together with Maestro Armando Victor Krieger (director of the Teatro Colon of Buenos Aires) at the piano, he presented a world premiere for the Argentine Embassy in Italy. He has collaborated with, Andy Farber from New York, with the Brazilian artist Emanuel Dimas de Melo Pimenta, with French saxophonist Serge Bertocchi, with Hans de Jong, Sara Markham, Levente Puskàs, Stathis Mavrommatis, Nino Dimov, and Yiannis Miralis. He has collaborated also with clarinetist Calogero Palermo, with composers Antonello Neri, Stefano Taglietti, with the neapolitan guitarist Espedito De Marino and with the singer Red Canzian. He collaborated with the Italian musician and ethnomusicologist Ambrogio Sparagna.

He has given concerts as a soloist in France, Switzerland,  Austria, Belgium, Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Palestine (Bethlehem), Hungary, Cyprus, New York, Paraguay, Brazil and Italy. He is involved in the research and the spread of Italian music for saxophone with a particularly attention on contemporary music and on music for the cinema and the theatre.

He is the founder of the Sax Sophia Quartet for which the composers Germano Mazzocchetti , winner of Oscar prime Theter in Italy, Andrea Morricone and Dinos Costantinides, director of the Lousiana Sinfonietta State University Baton Rouge (USA) have written new works. This Quartet has given world premieres in Italy, Switzerland and Romania.

In the theater he collaborated with the actors Sergio Bustric (actor of the film La vita è bella, Oscar Award), Peppe Servillo and Patrizio Rispo.

He won national and international competitions of classical and contemporary music. He is the dedicatee of many compositions of which gave the World Premier. Among the many awards he has received, there is the Prize Rotary Club for young talented musicians International Rotary Club Young Musician. He is frequently a member of jury and in national and international saxophone competitions and he is a guest in national and international saxophone festivals.

He teaches saxophone in Italian public school and in various academies and holds master classes in Europe and lectures on Italian music for saxophone and the international contemporary music. He participated in national and international television recordings (RAI World, RAI Uno, Radio Broadcasting Station of the Holy See Episcopal of Italy) and radio (RAI-RADIO 3)

He recorded a CD of world premiers in collaboration with some of the greatest contemporary Italian composers: Ennio Morricone, Nicola Piovani and Luis Bacalov Oscar Awards ; Sergio Rendine, the famous harpist Cecilia Chailly, the cellist Giovanni Sollima and music writers chamber of Marco Tutino, Marco Betta, Giovanni D'Aquila and Opera Lorenzo Ferrero writer. (Sterling record label)

The first absolute performance of the composition of Maestro Marco Tutino was performed at the Pantheon in Rome.

He collaborates with composer Sergio Rendine as saxophonist soloist, and together they presented a world premiere of a composition for soprano saxophone and organ, written on the occasion of the 70th the 70th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bomb at the Concert for Peace - Assisi Sacred Sound in world view Rai World.

His arrangements and editions have been published by Casa Musicale Sonzogno, Milan .

He also devotes himself to the diffusion of Italian saxophone music, with particular attention to contemporary music and music for cinema and theater and is a researcher of innovative techniques of the instrument and experimenter of new musical languages for saxophone.

Reviewed by national and international magazines and newspapers (paper and websites).

Photo credit : Paolo Iammarone