Giovanni Sollima

Giovanni Sollima, an Italian cellist and composer whose post-minimalist language draws on an eclectic range of influences, has forged partnerships across numerous musical idioms while maintaining an active role as scholar and teacher at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

Born into a musical household in Palermo, Sicily, in 1962, he grew up alongside siblings who also pursued music and under the guidance of his father, the pianist and composer Eliodoro Sollima. At the age of ten Sollima began cello lessons with Giovanni Perriera and simultaneously took his first steps in composition under his father’s tutelage. Following his diploma from the Conservatory of Palermo, he advanced his studies with cellist Antonio Janigro at the Universität Mozarteum Salzburg and later received composition instruction from Milko Kelemen at the Musikhochschule Stuttgart. Although he had been composing since the late 1970s, the first of his works to appear on disc was Violoncelles, Vibrez! in 1998, the same year he issued his debut album, Aquilarco.

In 1999 Sollima served as soloist, alongside conductor Eivind Aadland and the European Union Chamber Orchestra, in Porpora’s Cello Concerto in G Major on the album Concertos for the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. He re-emerged in 2000 both as composer and performer with the releases Spasimo and Viaggio in Italia, made his Carnegie Hall debut performing the latter work with the Lark Quartet, and contributed music to the soundtrack of the film I Cento Passi. His opera Ellis Island received its premiere at Palermo’s Teatro Massimo in 2002. Three years later the album Works appeared, presenting several commissioned pieces that included Caravaggio, J. Beuys Song, and Songs from the Divine Comedy.

Terra Aria and Concerto Rotondo supplied the soundtrack for Lasse Gjertsen’s 2007 video Daydream, while 2008 saw the release of We Were Trees, recorded with cellist Monika Leskovar, and the largely improvised Astrolabioanima, made with saxophonist Alessandro Gandola. By then Sollima had joined the faculty of the Romanino Foundation Brescia; in 2010 he was named Academic of the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. Two years afterward he established the 100 Cellos ensemble together with Enrico Melozzi and joined Antonio Florio and I Turchini for the recording Neapolitan Cello Concertos. Further releases from the decade encompassed Offenbach: Cello Duets with Andrea Noferini, Giovanni Battista Costanzi: Sonate per violoncello, and the crossover debut 100 Cellos Live by the ensemble.

In 2024, three years after the appearance of Elgar: Cello Concerto; Enigma Variations, his Concerto for violin, lute, percussion & strings (“Tyche”) was featured on Suite italienne: Vivaldi, Sollima, Stravinsky, and he also issued Giovanni Sollima: Al-Bunduqiyya - The Lost Concerto, a project that foregrounded his roles as performer, composer, and improviser.