Faculty Portrait

Contact Information

Name: Dr. Richard Savino

Title: Professor of Music

Office Location: Capistrano 401

Email: conos@aol.com

Office Phone: (916) 278-7978

Education : DMA, SUNY Stonybrook

Courses Taught : Applied Music - Guitar (classical), History of Rock Music

Profile

Guitarist/lutenist Richard Savino has been a featured performer throughout the US and abroad. His sponsors include the Frick Collection, Cloisters (Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY), Boston Early Music Festival International Series, Tage Alter Musik, Regensburg, London Early Music Network, Shrine To Music Museum, San Francisco/Seattle/ Vancouver/Victoria Early Music Societies, the Portland and Los Angeles Baroque Orchestras, the International Guitar Festival in Gargnano, Italy, the Guitar Foundation of America Festival and the National Guitar Summer Workshop. He has been Visiting Artistic Director of the Aston Magna Academy and Music Festival (1993, 1995, 2005, 2009), the Connecticut Early Music Festival (2002), and from 1994 - 1997 was Coordinator of Performance Practice at the Monadnock Music Festival in New Hampshire.

From 1987 – 1998 Mr. Savino directed the CSU Summer Arts Guitar and Lute Institute and is presently director of Ensemble El Mundo which performed the featured opening concert at the 1998 Berkeley Early Music Festival. An active opera enthusiast, Mr. Savino is principal theorbist/lutenist for the Glimmerglass and Houston Grand Operas. In 1982 Mr. Savino was chosen twice by Maestro Andres Segovia to perform in master-classes at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. In 1984 and 1986 he was chosen to perform in the International Segovia Fellowship Competition sponsored by New York University and in 1985 became the first solo guitarist to be chosen a winner at the Artists International Carnegie Recital Hall Debut Competition.

His recordings include the first period instrument versions of Luigi Boccherini's guitar quintets (3 CD's), Mauro Giuliani's Grand Quintetto and Johann Kaspar Mertz's Bardenklänge for the Harmonia Mundi record label, all of which have received great critical acclaim. In addition to receiving a 10 du Rèpertoire the Parisian journal has also placed his Boccherini recordings in their "Great Discoveries" category which they deem as essential to any classical music collection. He has recorded virtuoso sonatas by Paganini and Giuliani with British violinist Monica Huggett (HM), flute and guitar sonatas with renowned flutist Laurel Zucker (Cantelina), solo sonatas by Ferdinando Carulli on the Naxos label, an extensive collection of 18th century guitar music from Mexico by Santiago de Murcia (4 Stars: Goldberg) on Koch, and a collection of monody by Barbara Strozzi with soprano Emanuela Galli and Ensemble Gallilei, Stradivarius (Milano; 9 du Rèpertoire). Mr. Savino’s CD of Murcia was featured as the Global Hit on the Public Radio International program The World, and he has also been the subject of a one hour special on the PRI program Harmonia. His most recent recordings include a cd of music titled Venice Before Vivaldi, a Portrait of Giovanni Legrenzi with El Mundo, a solo CD of baroque guitar music by Robert DeVisee and Françios Campion, (Koch); and music by Biagio Marini with Monica Huggett and Ensemble Galatea (Stradivarius). Koch International has also released his recording of the first period instrument versions of the Boccherini Guitar Symphonia, the Op. 30 Concerto for Guitar by Mauro Giuliani with Ms. Huggett and the Portland Baroque Orchestra.

Mr. Savino has appeared on the CBS and PBS television networks, has been heard "in recital" on National Public Radio's Performance Today, Morning Pro Musica, Off The Record, England's BBC and the CBC’s Music from Montreal and Music from Vancouver programs. Last year he was the subject of a one hour special on the NPR’s Harmonia. In 1995 he was a contributing author to the Cambridge University Press Studies in Performance Practice series and is presently editing the complete works of Fernando Sor for Editions Chanterelle and a collection of secular monodies by Francesca Caccini for Indiana University Press. In 2008 Mr. Savino participated in a series of concerts and a cd/dvd recording project with the renowned vocal ensemble Chanticleer which featured music from historic missions throughout California.

Mr. Savino has studied with Oscar Ghiglia, Eliot Fisk and received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree from SUNY at Stony Brook where he studied with Jerry Willard. He is presently a Guest Lecturer at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and Professor of Music at the California State University at Sacramento where in 1994 he was the first member of the music faculty to be awarded an Outstanding and Exceptional sabbatical, in 1996 became only the seventh Sacramento State faculty to receive the prestigious Semester Leave Research Award and in 2001 was granted a Best Sabbatical Award.