Davide Giovanni Tomasi was born on 21st November 1991 in Pavia, Italy. He was raised in a
family of musicians and mixed heritage. His grandfather was a Polish conductor, while his
grandmother, Anna de Cavalieri was a famous American soprano. He took up the guitar at 8 and entered the Conservatorio di Musica ‘Franco Vittadini’ in Pavia at 13.
In 2008 he moved to the Conservatorio ‘Guido Cantelli’ in Novara, where he graduated with
honors at only 18 under the guidance of Guido Fichtner, while finishing high school. One year later, he won the Premio Nazionale delle Arti, given to the best students of the conservatories in Italy by the Italian Ministry of Education. In 2012 he started studying with Adriano del Sal and Paolo Pegoraro at the Segovia Academy in Pordenone, and in 2016 he followed Paolo Pegoraro at the Kunstuniversität Graz. He has attended masterclasses led by Oscar Ghiglia, Judicael Perroy, Lorenzo Micheli, Matteo Mela, Zoran Dukic, Manuel Barrueco, among others.
His international career started in 2014 by winning first prize at the Emilio Pujol International Guitar Competition in Sassari. Two years later, he won first prize and audience prize at the
Viseu International Guitar Competition (Portugal), first prize at the Gargnano International
Guitar Competition (Italy), and second prize at the Guitar Masters Competition in Wroclaw,
Poland. In December of the same year, he was awarded first prize at the Tokyo International Guitar Competition, the most important guitar competition in Asia: since then, and until 2020 he was invited to tour Japan every year.
In the same period, he founded the Tomasi-Musso Guitar Duo with the Italian guitarist
Marco Musso. Together, they have been playing in three continents, always highly praised by critics. Their musical vision and their constant research for new possibilities have led them to create a whole new repertoire for this ensemble, mostly based on original transcriptions of works for piano solo. This concept has given birth to “Miroirs”, their first album, published by BAM Music International in 2019 and dedicated to masterpieces by Claude Debussy and Maurice Ravel.
2017 represented the breakthrough year for Tomasi. In September, he won the top prize at
the ARD International Music Competition in Munich, one of the most prestigious in the
world, twenty-six years after the last edition dedicated to the guitar. Thanks to this award, in the following year he held more than sixty concerts in Germany and in the rest of the world, including renowned festival such as Festival Radio France Occitanie in Montpellier, Festival Ticino Musica in Lugano, Weilburger Schlosskonzerte, Meister & Kammerkonzerte in Innsbruck, and Liesborner Museumskonzerte. In 2017 he also won first prize at the José Tomas International Guitar Competition in Petrer (Spain), which gave him the opportunity to tour Spain, Mexico, and Brazil, and record his first solo album, ‘To the Edge of Dream’, published by JSM Guitar Records and dedicated to John Cage, Tōru Takemitsu, and Benjamin Britten. Finally, he was awarded the ‘Revelation of the Year’ Golden Guitar at the 22nd International Guitar Convention in Alessandria.
Tomasi has performed as a soloist with leading orchestras, e. g. the the Münchner
Rundfunkorchester, the AUKSO, the Polish Chamber Philharmonic Orchestra Sopot, the
Montenegrin Symphony Orchestra, the Sinfonie Orchester Berlin, and he is deeply involved
in chamber music.
Moreover, he has been invited to play at prestigious venues: the Philharmonie Berlin, the
Prinzregententheater in Munich, the Salle Pasteur – Le Corum in Montpellier, the
International House of Music in Moscow, the Auditorium of Museo del Violino in Cremona,
the Conjunto Santander in Guadalajara, the Aula Magna of “La Sapienza” University in Rome, the Hakuju Hall in Tokyo among others. His performances have also been broadcasted by Radio France, BR Klassik, Hessische Rundfunk, and Radio Vaticana.
He is often requested to give masterclasses in Italy and abroad, e. g. at the Hochschule für Musik Würzburg, Germany, at the Guitar Academy in Poznań, Poland, at Conjunto Santander in Guadalajara, Mexico, and at Conservatorio ‘Guido Cantelli’ in Novara, Italy. Between March and October 2021, he was also a guitar teacher at the Conservatorio ‘Giovan Battista Martini’ in Bologna.
In 2020, he created ‘Art Works!’, a new series of online events to support classical music
during the hard times of the pandemic. They were all recorded in high quality at the Chiesa
di San Lazzaro in Pavia (Italy) and streamed on Facebook. They included live performances,
talks with the artists, and podcasts. In September of the same year, he made his debut as a
soloist with the Sinfonie Orchester Berlin and Stanley Dodds in the main hall of the
Philharmonie Berlin, becoming one of the few guitarists who have performed at this
legendary venue.
In the coming season, he will be playing the 43 Ghiribizzi by Niccolò Paganini at the
Brucknerhaus in Linz, alternately with the 42 poems from ‘A Journey Around My Room’ by
Xavier de Maistre, recited by the German actor Matthias Brandt. Moreover, he will be
making his debut for Unione Musicale in Turin, then he will be performing the Winterreise
by Franz Schubert with the Tomasi-Musso Guitar Duo and Jonas Müller at the Oratorio del
Gonfalone in Rome, and finally he will be back touring Taiwan and Japan.