Guitar Recital by Massimo Scattolin and Readings by Ass. Prof Avril Alba

With the bill n. 211 of the 2000, the Italian government established the International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2022. Since then and every year, in Italy and abroad, all the actors of the Sistema Paese commemorate the victims of the Holocaust and of the Nazism. The day on which Soviet troops broke down the gates of the Auschwitz extermination camp, January 27, was chosen by the UN with a resolution dated 2005.

Also for 2024 the Italian Cultural Institute will commemorate the anniversary by organizing a classical guitar recital by the internationally renowned guitarist Massimo Scattolin.

For the occasion, Scattolin will present a special program with the significant title 10 November 1938, a collection of songs he composed and in the past presented as soundtracks for fiction and theatrical dramas.

During the evening, a collection of extracts from a prison diary will also be read. The reading will be carried out by Ass. Prof. Avril Alba of the University of Sydney.

After studying with Andres Segovia, Massimo Scattolin began his concert career as a soloist, later developing chamber and orchestral activity. Scattolin has been defined by critics as one of the best guitarists of our times and is well known by European, Asian, North and South American and Australian audiences. He has worked with the main European television networks, as well as with great theater actors such as Cucciolla, Pagliai and Gassman. He regularly participates in international festivals and is the first Italian guitarist to have held masterclasses at the “Mozarteum” in Salzburg. He has more than 50 recordings to his credit, with orchestra, as a soloist and in collaboration with musicians such as the violinists Giuliano Carmignola, Domenico Nordio, Paolo Tagliamento and Franco Mezzena, the cellists Patrick Demenga, Arturo Bonucci and Julius Berger, the flautist Roberto Fabbriciani , the Amati and Aron quartets, the pianist Massimiliano Damerini, the guitarists Carlos Bonell and Andrea Vettoretti, the tenor Francesco Grollo, the percussionist Tullio De Piscopo and the famous Cuban group “Buena Vista Social Club”. Massimo plays a “lattice braced” guitar, made by Enzo Guido, with Dogal “Maestrale” strings.

Avril Alba is Associate Professor in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation in the Department of Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies at the University of Sydney. She teaches and researches in the areas of Holocaust and modern Jewish history with a focus on Jewish and Holocaust museums. Her monograph, The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space was published by Palgrave MacMillan in 2015. From 2002-2011 Avril was the Education Director at the Sydney Jewish Museum where she also served as the Project Director/Curator for the permanent exhibitions Culture and Continuity (2009), The Holocaust (2017) and The Holocaust and Human Rights (2018 with Prof Jennifer Barrett and Prof Dirk Moses). Her current major research project, The Memory of the Holocaust in Australian Public Life is supported by an ARC Discovery Grant.

The presentation will be in ENGLISH.

Free entry. Limited seats.