Marco Ramelli

Marco is a lecturer at TU Dublin Conservatoire, approaching music with curiosity and a spirit of research.

As a guitarist, his interests range from contemporary music to historical performance on period instruments. He investigates the relationship between instrument and interpretation, particularly by developing projects aimed at enhancing tactile sensitivity. He has performed worldwide appearing in important venues as a soloist and chamber musician.

He has recorded several albums, including the guitar music of Roberto Gerhard and Federico Mompou, as well as Mompou’s piano transcriptions. In 2025, he will release the first album in the A Tempo Rubato series with Enrica Savigni, featuring Romantic repertoire as part of a research project on time perception and rhythmic nuance.

His research interests span performance practice, music cognition, and organology, with a recent focus on trauma, disability, and their impact on creativity. In 2022, he contributed The Influence of the Spanish Civil War on Roberto Gerhard’s Guitar Music to Roberto Gerhard: Re-appraising a Musical Visionary (Oxford University Press). His latest research examines the contributions of blind musicians to the evolution of the guitar.

As a composer, Marco gained international recognition by winning the World Guitar Composition Competition in Serbia. His works are performed worldwide by leading soloists, including Sean Shibe, Andrea Dieci, Lorenzo Micheli, and Andrea De Vitis. Collaboration is central to his artistic path, leading to numerous premieres of works dedicated to him.

Believing in the role of community in musical creativity, he has been involved in the creation of artistic initiatives such as Festival Corde d’Autunno and Residenze Erranti, fostering a young research-oriented guitar community. This same vision drives TouchTheSound, a project exploring historical instruments as a source of knowledge, co-founded with Gabriele Lodi and Enrica Savigni. He also organizes research symposia, including the Dublin Guitar Symposium, and serves on the steering committee of the Festival of Music Performance Research (Dublin) and TU Dublin Research Symposium. In 2018, he was awarded the Chitarra d’Oro for promotion by the Scientific Committee of the International Guitar Conference Michele Pittaluga.

Marco holds a doctorate in performing arts from the University of St Andrews and the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, focusing on performer-composer collaboration. He obtained his guitar diploma as an external candidate at the Conservatorio di Musica Giuseppe Verdi in Milan and later earned two postgraduate diplomas one in guitar and one in chamber music from the Conservatorio di Musica Luca Marenzio. He completed a Master’s in Performance (APEL) with distinction at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, studying guitar with Alan Neave and composition with Rory Boyle. He began studying guitar with Andrea Dieci and attended masterclasses including Pavel Steidl, and Oscar Ghiglia.

He completed a postgraduate course in organology at the University of Edinburgh and he has collaborated with many luthiers. Additionally, he holds a degree in Computer Science with a focus on mathematical methods for computing, interested in researching Petri nets and neural networks.

Marco uses a historic guitar purchased with the support of Music Network’s Music Capital Scheme, funded by the Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media. Music Network is funded by The Arts Council.