ANTONIO MERCURIO
Double Bass
CURRICULUM
He started his studies in Milan at the "Claudio Abbado" Civic School of Music at the age of 12 with Carlo Capriata and then graduated with Claudio Pinferetti at the "Giuseppe Verdi" Conservatory. He perfected himself at the Walter Stauffer Academy in Cremona and at the Sermoneta courses with Franco Petracchi. Later the Accademia della Scala in Milan will represent further musical training thanks to the masters Giuseppe Ettorre and Francesco Siragusa, both first double basses of the same Milanese theater.
Since 2015 he has been the first double bass at the Arturo Toscanini Foundation in Parma, the same year in which the "Carlo Capriata" International Prize is awarded for artistic recognition achieved in Italy and abroad. In 2020 he won the "Cinematic Award" for the International J. M. Sperger Competition / Quarantine Challenge with two of the videos of the Quarantine Project.
In 2004 Riccardo Muti chose him as first double bass of the newborn Luigi Cherubini Orchestra of Piacenza and Ravenna, where he will remain for 4 years.
He is regularly invited as principal double bass in several European orchestras, such as the Orchestra dell' Accademia di Santa Cecilia in Rome, the San Carlo in Naples and the Royal Northern Sinfonia in England.
Among the numerous collaborations with professional orchestras, we mention: the Philharmonic Orchestra of La Scala, the Haydn Orchestra of Trento and Bolzano, the Orchestra of Italian Switzerland of Lugano and the Orchestra of the Teatro Regio of Parma, thanks to which he has the opportunity to playing with internationally renowned conductors and soloists.
His professional activity has a long period in Spain, where he won numerous competitions for orchestra, including the Orchestra of the Region of Murcia, the Orchestra of Gran Canaria, the Symphony Orchestra of Galicia, Orchestra Bandart and the Oviedo Filarmonia with whom he works as first double bass until 2015.
Since 2008 he has participated in the musical project Spira Mirabilis, recognized by the EU as an ambassador of Culture in Europe and winner of various international awards, such as the Deutschlandfunk Förderpreis in 2010 in Bremen.
Various chamber music experiences, performing for important festivals and international foundations such as the Società del Quartetto di Milano, the Società dei Concerti di Parma, Brahms in Milan collaborating with chamber ensembles such as the Quartetto Noûs and the Filarmonici di Busseto. Worth mentioning is certainly Schubert's Octet with the Spira Mirabilis in the great theaters of Italy and Europe, including the concert at the Queen Elisabethdra in 2010.
There is no shortage of solo experiences, starting with the Gran Duo Concertante for double bass and violin accompanied by the Arturo Toscanini Philharmonic with the violinist Viktoria Borissova, Astor Piazzolla's Contrabajeando with Richard Galliano, Bottesini's Concerto in B minor accompanied by the Alessandria Chamber Orchestra (2015) and numerous other recital performances in Spain and Italy.
He is the founder of the Coll'Arco Quartet, a chamber ensemble that focuses on Rossini's chamber music, for which he has made various transcriptions of opera symphonies by the same author for the forthcoming printed edition. Since 2020 he has been a professor at the Academy of High Instrumental Musical Improvement "hdemia22" in Parma, a project of Parma Concerti.
In 2015 he is soloist and co-soloist of two double bass duets by Simon Garcia in Diego Zecharies' CD "Music for double bass solo, duett and quintet".