From initial ambitions aiming at the ideal of the "best therapist" to discovering that the real journey was the search for self, step by step.
A heads up: even though I have two names on my documents (the other is Alberto), I only turn around if I hear the first one.
I have traveled for more than thirty years through the territories of music therapy. In this endless journey I have drawn maps, written travel diaries, taken videos and photos. I traveled on foot but often I took trains, planes, ships, bicycles, hot air balloons.
Initially I thought all this fuss was aimed at becoming the best Italian music therapist. Then year after year, step by step, I started to realize that the real engine moving my life was indeed enormous curiosity but the focus of the research was me.
For me, music therapy is essentially a space. It is the space where I learned a lot of things, but above all I learned to be TRUE, I took care of myself, I fell in love with my own sound, I learned to listen to my singing voice.
I am a multi-instrumentalist musician: piano, guitar, bass, accordion, ukulele, percussion. I sing and compose songs. I have worked for over thirty years with elderly people with Alzheimer's dementia in nursing homes, psychiatric patients, children with multiple disabilities, and terminally ill cancer patients.
I have been teaching since 2006 at the State Conservatory of Music 'E.F. Dall'Abaco' of Verona, initially with a fixed-term contract in the experimental Master's in music therapy. Since 2024, following a public competition, I am a tenured professor for the Chair of the new ordinary Master's degree in Theories and Techniques of Music Therapy (AFAM06 ex COMT/01, COMT/02, COMT/03 and COMT/04).
My perspective is consciously hybrid and interdisciplinary. I inhabit the border zone between music and therapy, between art and science — not as a limit but as a generative place of innovation.
I integrate multiple traditions without school dogmatisms. I am critical of the orthodoxies and pre-packaged identities of the discipline, with particular attention to relational, participatory, and community approaches.
"For years I felt like a dissonance: a hybrid, walking on the borderlands. Neither a pure musician, nor an orthodox therapist. Then I discovered that dissonances always have a resolution... but only if you have the courage to let them vibrate long enough. Being a hybrid was exactly what was needed."
— From my TEDx Talk
The cultural foundations: disciplines of arts, music and performing arts.
Old academic system. The roots of my musical practice.
The great Italian masters: Cremaschi, Scardovelli, Guerra Lisi, sonic dialogue. The foundation on which everything is built.
The Alvin model. The Anglo-Saxon perspective adds rigor and a different vision of the therapist's role.
The Benenzon model, psychiatry. The first encounter with the world of the sonic unconscious.
The drum circle as a place where people find a common pulse.
The body as a rhythmic instrument. A completely new dimension.
Neuroscience meets music therapy. Scientific rigor and evidence-based clinical applications.
Below are my 5 main printed volumes. The other 4 Creative Commons publications are available as free downloads in the Resources section.
2007 • Armando Editore
Song composition as an intervention strategy in music therapy.
2018 • Franco Angeli
Itineraries, principles and practices for a different music therapy. Written with Stefania Mattiello.
2021 • Gesualdo Edizioni
Cognitive stimulation training with music. Published with Sara Demoro and Giulia Martini.
2021 • Gesualdo Edizioni
Songwriting and music therapy. Edited with Luca Xodo.
2024 • Gesualdo Edizioni
Edited with Enrico Ceccato.