User:Labmambo/sandbox

John T. La Barbera, composer-arranger, guitarist, and mandolinist, is the author of the first and foremost Italian mandolin book Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes, and Italian Folk Music For Mandolin with Mel Bay Publications and currently on their best sellers list. Awarded for his extraordinary role in the transmission and translation of Italian oral traditions from The Italian Oral History Institute in 2005, La Barbera is recognized as a pioneer in reviving Southern Italian folk music and one of it’s first transcribers in America. Because of his expertise in Italian traditional music, La Barbera has been a valuable resource for both film and theater directors. Immediately after graduating with a Bachelor of Music degree in classical guitar from the Hartt School of Music in Hartford, Connecticut, he was awarded a scholarship to continue graduate studies in Siena and Florence, Italy. It was in Italy during the early 1970’s where he launched his professional career as full time guitarist and arranger for the music and theater company Pupi e Fresedde, a group that left an indelible mark and vast contribution to folk music in Italy. He started to transcribe a huge repertoire of folk music during this time. By 1977, the group inspired the German born director, Peter Schumann, puppet master and founder of The Bread and Puppet Theater to write “La Ballata di Masaniello” (The Ballad of the 14 days of Masaniello) and premiered the group on an American and European tour. The group presented to American audiences for the first time, in 1977, the music of the “Pizzica Tarantata” and other traditional folk music from the Salento region and Naples.Upon his return to the U.S., he brought back his experience and own transcriptions of this music to form I Giullari di Piazza, together with vocalist-tambourine artist Alessandra Belloni, in New York City in 1979. He has recorded numerous albums of traditional Southern Italian folk music since 1978 among them include: La Terra del Rimorso; Addo t’a Pizzicato `a Tarantella; Sulillo Mio; Dea Fortuna; Earth, Sun and Moon; Global Celebrations; In The Labyrinth; Mediterranean Lullaby; Papa’s Lullaby; Mother Earth Lullaby and American Lullaby.

As composer, his film score include: the Academy Award Nominated feature documentary: Children of Fate, (1992), Sister Italy (2012), Sacco and Vanzetti (2008), awarded best historical film from the American Historical Association; Pane Amaro (2008); What's up Scarlet (2005) Neapolitan Heart -Cuore Napolitano (2000); La Festa (1996) and Tarantella (1994).

In Theater, he has worked as composer, arranger and musical director for several off-Broadway productions including: Souls of Naples, (Theater for a New Audience) starring John and Aida Turturro; Kaos, (New York Theater Workshop) directed by choreographer Marta Clarke; productions for LaMaMa E.T.C., arranger for Liz Swados’s Bible Women. He has composed several fully staged folk operas including: La Lupa (The She –Wolf) Stabat Mater: Donna di Paradiso; The Voyage of the Black Madonna; and The Dance of the Ancient Spider.

Recipient of several composing awards and commissions from The Jerome Foundation, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, The Martin Gruss Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer, ASCAP and finalist in the Jazz category of the John Lennon Songwriting Competition.

Published works include: Traditional Southern Italian Mandolin and Fiddle Tunes, 2009, and Italian Folk Music For Mandolin, 2012, both with Mel Bay Publications;The Marimbaba Suite- for percussion quartet and Danza del Fuego- for solo marimba, both published with Bachovich Music Publications, 2009; and has contributed a chapter in “Oral History, Oral Culture, and Italian Americans”, Palgrave-MacMillan. 2009.

As a concert artist, he has performed to audiences throughout the United States, Europe and South America including: The Montreal Jazz Festival, Carnegie Hall, Alice Tully Hall-Lincoln Center, The Felt Forum, Guggenheim Museum, Metropolitan Museum of New York, Smithsonian Institute, Symphony Space, UCLA, the San Francisco World Music Festival, Central Park Summer Stage, the Jones Beach Theater, Eastern Europe, Italy, France, Germany, Belgium, Switzerland, Scotland and Brazil. In Brazil, he has returned several times to present concerts as a soloist and collaborator with Brazilian musicians produced by the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasil Festeiro and SESC, in Sao Paulo and Porto Allegre.

As composer and producer his music appears on several labels including: Shanachie records, Meadowlark, Rounder Records, Lyrichord Disks, Ellipsis Arts, and Bribie records. He appears as a musician playing in feature films including When in Rome (Touchstone films), The Bounty Hunter (Sony-Columbia) and Warner TV’s The Gossip Girls.

He teaches at the Bergen Community College in Paramus, New Jersey and has taught at The Julius Hartt School of Music (University of Hartford); The Guitar Study Center of the New School in N.Y.; Sessione Sienese in Siena, Italy; SASI in Bratislava, Slovakia; and SESC in Sao Paulo, Brazil. He is an artist in residence, since 1994, at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in Katonah, New York with the educational program on Italian renaissance music and composer for their “What’s in a House” series for young students.

He holds a M.M. in Jazz Studies and Arranging at William Paterson University (N.J.); B.M. in Classical Guitar from the Hartt School of Music, (Univ.of Hartford), graduate studies at Hunter College (NYC) in ethnomusicology; Villa Schifanoia (Rosary College), in Florence: and the film music seminar with film composer, Ennio Morricone at the Academia Chigiana in Siena, Italy.