Frame Drum Community Mourns Death of Gianluca Baldo

Italian frame drum maestro Gianluca Baldo died Saturday, August 9. He was 47. Baldo was a frame drum specialist, a painter and also the organizer of the Frame Drummers Meeting in Barcelona (Spain). "Gianluca was a very fine artist and a very fine human being, whose first phrase at any encounter was always "how can I help you?," says Canadian ethnomusicologist Judith cohen.

Gianluca Baldo was born in Verona (Italy) on July 7th, 1961. He was always very close to music. When he was 12 Baldo started studying guitar. In his own words: "Over the years I played different percussion instruments without any regular education, since 2004, when thanks to Juan Luis Castaño I discovered frame drums. I have been lucky enough to start studying with Glen Velez, the main reference for what concerns modern frame drumming."

"I also studied frame drums techniques with Zohar Fresco, ghatam with Ghatam Suresh, kanjira with Ganesh Kumar, tamburello and tammorra techniques with Paolo Cimmino and Andrea Piccioni, percussions in early music with Pedro Estevan.

My musical preferences are for acoustic jazz, fusion and world music (i.e. Oregon, Ralph Towner as a soloist, Glen Velez and for many great percussionists like Zakir Hussain, Collin Walcott, Trilok Gurtu, Arto Tunçboyaciyan and others, along with classical composers like Ravel, Mahler, Stravinsky, and Bartok."

In 1999 Baldo moved to Barcelona (Spain), where he promoted the art of frame drumming. "In 2005, together with Paolo Cimmino and Andrea Piccioni I founded the Frame Drums Europe association, with the goal to promote the rich European and Mediterranean frame rums culture. In the 2005 and 2006 we organized the European Frame Drummers Meeting, the first meeting of European frame drummers ever organized."

Web sites:

• www.gianlucabaldo.com
• www.gianlucabaldomusic.com
• www.framedrumseurope.org
• www.solopercusion.net, Baldo’s discussion forum dedicated to percussion in Spanish language.