Steve Mauro

Very popular artist in Italy, both as a solo artist and as session musician, Mauro Pagani had a good solo career after leaving Premiata Forneria Marconi in 1976, tired of the long hard work on the road. In his early days as a musician, Pagani had played with Gli Araldi, JB Club, I Dalton. His love for the world music strongly emerged in his 1978 first album, simply entitled Mauro Pagani, featuring many of the best Italian musicians of that time, among which Area's members Demetrio Stratos, Patrizio Fariselli, Giulio Capiozzo and Ares Tavolazzi, PFM's old cohorts Franco Mussida, Patrick Djivas and Franz Di Cioccio, singer Teresa De Sio. The album is very far from his old band's works, with strong oriental folklore influences, but definitely a very good one.

An acclaimed Italian guitar virtuoso and composer, Mauro Giuliani, along with Fernando Sor, was one of the last great classical proponents of his instrument until its revival in the early twentieth century. He studied counterpoint and the cello, but on the six-string guitar he was entirely self-taught, and that became his principal instrument early on. Italy abounded with fine guitarists at the beginning of the nineteenth century (Carulli remains the most familiar today), but few of them could make a living because of the public's preoccupation with opera. So Giuliani embarked on a successful tour of Europe when he was 19, and in 1806 he settled in Vienna, where he entered the musical circle of Diabelli, Moscheles, and Hummel. He solidified his reputation with the 1808 premiere of his Guitar Concerto in A major, Op. 30, and was soon heralded as the greatest living guitar virtuoso. Even Beethoven noticed Giuliani, and wrote of his admiration for him. Perhaps to return the favor, Giuliani played cello in the 1813 premiere of Beethoven's Symphony No. 7.