Andre feriante biography

Born in Naples, Italy, Feriante spent his formative years between Southern Italy and Manziana, a village just outside Rome.
Italian born Andre Feriante has developed a one-of-a-kind style blending classical, flamenco, contemporary, and world music elements.
Andre Feriante Biography by Jason Birchmeier.

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BIOGRAPHY

With 4 decades of performing and recording, award-winning virtuoso guitarist Andre Feriante has left his musical mark on the classical, neo-flamenco, world music and fusion scenes. A cross-over artist in the vein of Yo Yo Ma or Sting, his performance program represents a bold but fluid musical fusion, featuring music from Bach to Leonard Cohen, flamenco improvisation to jazz standards, Americana to World Music, and even poetry by Federico Garcia Lorca, Rumi and Feriante himself.

With training by guitar masters like Maestro Andrés Segovia, Feriante is a world renowned virtuoso musician in his own right. His musical art sings from the Spanish guitar, harp guitar, ukulele, harp ukulele, nylon string banjo, charango, oud, saz, and most recently the shamisen, ruan, and sitar. That’s just a sample of his 43 instrument collection.

While classically trained and accomplished, Andre has chosen to move beyond the traditional academy ideology. A true artist in every sense, Andre is a composer offering his own musical

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Exactly one year ago this month, Andre Feriante and Troy Chapman picked up their instruments onstage at Whidbey Island Center for the Arts and wrote a new chapter in the History of the World — according to the guitar, that is.

Those who missed hearing Whidbey Island’s two guitar masters performing together at the Cythara show last November get another shot at the experience this weekend. In the Cythara 2 performance on Nov. 16, Feriante and Chapman will repeat and evolve the original show to illustrate and interpret the march of time through centuries of musical instruments.

In the multicultural onstage phenomenon, the acclaimed musicians transform a seemingly disconnected group of eclectic global stringed instruments into an ethereal orchestra of sound.

History, storytelling, poetry and raw talent play a role in Cythara 2, which is apt to change at any moment as the evening progresses. As haunting melodies dig deep into world traditions, tragedies and triumphs, the stories unfold through ages-old instruments that have gradually made their way into the collections

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A new chapter is about to be added to the history of the world.

At least in the minds of two Whidbey wizards of all-things guitar, Troy Chapman and Andre Feriante. They are collaborating on an instrumental show that spans the globe from India to South America, the Middle East to the American South, the Old World to the new.

Called Cythara: The History of the World According to the Guitar, it’s the duo’s debut. They’ll perform 7:30-9:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 10 at the Whidbey Island Center for the Arts.

Using their own personal collection of some two dozen or so string instruments, they plan to take their audience on a visual and audio tour around the world, talking about every instrument and how they all contain a common gene.

“All are relatives of the guitar,” Feriante said. “The oud is basically the guitar of the Middle East. It goes back 3,500 years, and there are versions of the oud in Turkey, Syria, Iraq. The rubab that Troy plays is from Uzbekistan and Afghanistan.”

The duo said they plan to open the show by taking a big step