Giacomo Castellano was born in Florence, Italy, on 10th April 1969.
He picked up his first guitar when he was 14 years old.
At age 19, he moved to Hollywood and went to study at Muscians Institute (MI) in Los Angeles. After that experience and full of a new inspiring energy, he returned to Italy and started to teach in several important Music Schools, began writing regular articles for specialised guitar magazines, giving seminars all around the country, and publishing guitar technique manuals that are used by thousands of Italian students.
From 1990, parallel to his didactic activity, he started to play both in the studio and on stage, bringing a personal rock “accent” to mainly pop productions. He worked with many artists, and amongst them he likes to remember Vasco Rossi, Gianluca Grignani, Irene Grandi, Gianna Nannini, Elisa, Rosana Arbelo (Spain), Monica Naranjo (Spain), Lougarx (Spain), the Spanish edition of WE WILL ROCK YOU,  the musical written by THE QUEEN and most recently Noemi, the new italian Pop Star with whom he still actively collaborates. 
GC has always been interested in producing and arranging, after several years of underground local productions  he published, at the end of 2004,  his first solo CD, which was produced partly in his Florence studio and partly in his one in Madrid. CUTTING BRIDGES is a selection of “chapters” of his professional life, which includes the great collaboration of incredibly gifted artists. The tracks of the CD are rich and diverse, eclectic and unpredictable, but their common denominator is his guitar, the very instrument that makes GC a great artist.
CB received acclaimed reviews in all specialised magazines and it is now part of the record collection of worldwide “connoisseurs”.
Following the publication of his CD, he started to take part as a guitar player, but also as producer and arranger, in many interesting projects with independent artists in Italy, Germany and Spain.
Subsequently, he kept touring, recording and taking part in TV programs, almost incessantly. While touring with GN, he met Thomas Lang. With him, he has started an international enterprise on several works. The latest will be represented by “Chumash”, a forthcoming acoustic album project with strong ethnic influences and with amazing guest musicians, such as:.......and many more. 


"It's only by being on the edge that we know who we really are - under the skin".

- Gustav Graves

I am an amateur classical composer as well as a singer/guitarist of mostly folk and blues music.
I studied music during my first year in college at the original campus of Douglas College in New Westminster, BC, Canada in 1980.
I studied piano during my last two years of high school in Salzburg, Austria (1978-1980), as well as taking lessons earlier in my youth.
I'm mostly self-taught with a little feedback and input from friends who are themselves classical musicians.I also listen to a lot of classical music - primarily from the classical to romantic eras.
I currently live in Southern California.  If you are interested in accessing the scores to any of my compositions, please contact me.  It would please me greatly to have a good pianist play my pieces.  Also, I'd like to say thanks to all the SoundCloud composers who have encouraged and inspired me since I first joined.  This is truly a great site to explore what others are doing with composition.  It give me not only great stuff to listen to, but great ideas for future projects.  So a big THANK YOU!!! to everyone.

All of my compositions are created using MuseScore open source notation software.  I support open source software.  MuseScore is the best alternative to the expensive professional notation platforms, and it's free.  The app can be downloaded from the app section of SoundCloud.  If you're going to use MuseScore, I suggest changing the sound font from the default MIDI font to an appropriate alternative.  There are many alternatives that you can find for free on the web, including several from MuseScore.  If you'd like some assistance with this, I'm happy to provide it.

The sounds that you hear on my tracks are the playback from MuseScore (with considerable tweaking for expression), and not my own performance.  You can get quite a natural sound with the right sound font.  MuseScore continues to make improvements to the software such that with the new release, the sound is much more optimal than with previous releases.

I've recently begun to post my folk performances from YouTube.  These songs aren't professionally produced in any way.  I sat down in front of my computer with my guitar and recorded the videos raw using my webcam - mostly in one take.  Some have been overdubbed with extra guitar work and vocals, but for the most part, they're just me with a guitar.  You also get the added touch of dogs barking in the background, and my creaky chair.  I also mess up on the words here and there, but that would probably occur in any live performance anyway.  I enhanced the sound using GarageBand; which came free with my Mac computer; so don't think I'm a sound technician in any way.  Enjoy!!!


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