Zappawoman Trio (IT)
with special guest Robert Martin (USA)

Valentina Ciardelli (Double Bass)

Valentina is a classically trained musician born in Pietrasanta (Lucca - Italy), to a German mother and Italian father. Initially a pianist, she started to play double bass in late 2009, graduating with Honours from the “Istituto Musicale L. Boccherini” in Lucca in October 2014. Valentina also focused her attention on composition, graduating in March 2014 with Honours. Valentina has won several awards and prizes. Valentina also won several orchestral auditions such as Gustav Mahler Academy 2016 and BBC SO training scheme. Currently, Valentina lives in London and she is teacher assistant in Leon’s Bosch class at Trinity Laban Conservatoire of Music and Dance and double bass professor at the London performing academy of Music. She explores the worldwide music scene and at the same time wishes to establish a new musical virtuosity on her double bass. She finds this particular instrument very versatile and unique. She is particularly moved by the music of Frank Zappa and has transcribed his music since she was 11 adapting it for the classical world. She firmly believes that the 21st century will be a renaissance for the double bass and compares it to the Romantic era when the Piano violin or cello started.

Alessandro Viale (Piano)

Born in Rome, Alessandro Viale is an eclectic musician who believes in the artist as a well-rounded person, active in society. This is why he studied piano, harpsichord, composition, conducting and chamber music, not to mention a degree in physics. In his career to date, Alessandro has conducted orchestras and choirs, founded ensembles, has been the accompanist in national and international competitions and for important European conservatoires. He has won several prizes, composed a film score, played extensively in many important venues in the UK, Norway, Germany, India, Switzerland, Malta, Spain, and Italy. He has appeared on radio and TV, his music being performed and broadcast throughout Europe by renowned musicians. His collaboration with composers has resulted in the world premiere of a significant number of new pieces, many written for him.

Ignazio Alayza (Viola)

Italian raised but with an international background, 1994 born violist Ignazio Alayza completed his studies with honours at the national conservatoire of his hometown, La Spezia, and he is currently finishing his second Master of Arts at the Private University of Music and Arts (MUK) of Vienna in the class of Gertrud Weinmeister. Besides constant artistic refinement through classes and master courses in whole Europe, with celebrated performers and like Maxim Rysanov, the Zemtsov family, Karsten Dobers or David Šlechta, among the others, he also had a chance to challenge hisself with teaching in the framework of a social project dedicated to children affected by social unrest (loosely based on the Abreu method) in his homeland, from 2014 till 2018. He is active as an orchestral performer in many different ensembles, like the EUYO (he has been a member of the European Music Gallery Festival Italian tour in 2020), the Brno Philharmonic (Czech Republic, as a trainee) or Italian orchestras as the Sanremo Symphony or the Puccini Festival Philharmonic of Torre del Lago, where he also led the viola section, but his activity is mostly centred on chamber music, with focus on the newly reborn Kandinsky String Quartet and the London based Duo Stoevskij, with double bassist Valentina Ciardelli, in whose first CD recording published by Da Vinci he appears as a guest.