I was born on April 15, 1978 in Rome and Ive started to play guitar at the beginning of 1995 immediately with an electric one. I took guitar lessons for 6 months from a friend of mine and then I continued by myself with methods and instructional videos. My early influences were Steve Vai, Joe Satriani but few months later I discovered the neoclassical era with Yngwie Malmsteen, Joey Tafolla, Vinnie Moore, Patrick Rondat and many more until I heard for the first time Jason Becker the one that most influenced my playing and my style. In that period, around 1997/1998 I started to record my first demos on audio cassettes and I started to play some concerts in my city. In the middle of 1999 I understood that my way of playing had changed, that it was matured through those years thanks to these musicians: George Bellas, Shawn Lane and Greg Howe but most of all thanks to Vitalij Kuprij. Under the new influences I recorded new music and in 1999 I started also to send my last record to web-magazines as Guitar 9, where I was reviewed as undiscovered artist for December 1999 and January 2000, and also on Whiplash, a Brazilian magazine.
Meanwhile my musical ideas had changed so I started to write and play music in a different way searching for my style and my own playing. In late 2000 I started to record my first real solo album “Suspension” that I released by self in summer 2001. I had a lot of world distributors, including also M.A.C.E. music the personal label of guitarist Michael Angelo Batio. Suspension helped me to be less unknown between the instrumental shred/prog guitarists, infact I had a lot of reviews and interviews and I started to write guitar lessons for a lot of web-magazines. On May 2002 Chops From Hell released my first instructional CD-Rom based on Arpeggios, on January 2003 the second one called ‘High Shred Techs’ and on March 2004 the third one called ‘Intese Guitar Playing’.
In the meantime Vitalij Kuprij asked me to partecipate with a guitar solo for his fourth solo album and for me it was an honour that such a great musician as Vitalij asked me that! For me it was a dream come true because Vitalij is my absolute GREATEST influence! He is an incredible player, a nice man and a cool friend! ‘Forward and Beyond’ was released in 2004 by Yamaha Music/Lion Music. The album features apart from Vitalij also guitarists as Michael Romeo (Symphony X), George Bellas, Jeff Kollman, Roger Staffelbach (Artension), Borislav Mitic and Michael Harris.
At the beginning of 2005 I finished to record and produce my second solo album called “Forbidden Dimension”. It includes great players as Kyle Honea on bass, Jon Doman on drums (tracked and engineered by Greg Howe at his personal studio), Vitalij Kuprij all piano and keyboards on one song and Bob Katsionis keyboards solos on 5 songs. The album is a shred/progessive influenced music and it was released by Lion Music on July 2005.
Ciao Francesco come va?Io sono un giovane chitarrista, in questo periodo un po’ in crisi per il fatto che non riesco a comporre, non so perche’ forse sara’ che non ho buone doti chitarristiche, non so ma i miei amici dicono che suono bene, vorrei che questo me lo dicesse un chitarrista esperto e ultra tecnico come te, che ne dici se ti invio un paio di mp3 suonati da me cosi almeno mi puo’ valutare uno ingamba come te ciao spero che tu sia daccordo!!!!