Biography
Barbara Piperno, born in 1980, started studying music at the age of 5.
She graduated in flute at Conservatorio G. Rossini in Pesaro (Italy) in 1996.
Her classical music career started winning a national competition called “Concorso Nazionale città di Sannicandro Garganico” as a soloist and some international competitions with a chamber ensemble called Cherubino Flute Ensemble, with whom she recorded several CDs and performed in many concerts in Italy and abroad.
She played and she still occasionally plays in some orchestras and she has been a member of the classical trio Ban Ensemble for ten year.
In 2003 Barbara also discovered her voice as a further mean to express herself and began to experiment other musical genres. She has been developing a deep passion for Brazilian popular music since 2003, but the encounter with Choro (Brazilian instrumental music) occurred only in 2011.
The following year, after a journey of study and research in Brazil, she recorded a CD, called Chorando na Toscana, made up of old choros with Choro de Rua group. In 2013 she released an album with the quintet Circolo Odeòn (about classical choros and some Italian popular pieces of Liscio Romagnolo, reinterpreted with a “choristic” accent) and a second CD with Choro de Rua project, in duo with the Brazilian 7-string guitar player Marco Ruviaro, entitled Aeroplanando.
In 2015 she recorded another CD called “A roda dos planetas errantes”, released in 2016, made up of compositions of the Italian pianist and composer Giovanni Guaccero (some of them are choros), together with him and Marco Ruviaro. This album is produced by Alfa Music and distributed by Egea.
She also organised, alone, together with Marco Ruviaro and sometimes with other Italian or Brazilian musicians, some workshops of Choro in private schools and in Conservatories, in Italy and abroad.
Barbara is literally trying to spread Choro around the world.
In 2016 she strengthened an old collaboration with the musician and sinologist Filippo Costantini, launching an original project based on Traditional Chinese Music, called “Dialogues between a Guqin and a Dizi”. They performed in various Universities in Italy and abroad, especially touring in Mexico and Spain.
In 2017 she started a new great project called Regional Matuto, a quartet of Choro with original compositions and some classic tunes. Its debut was in Germany, at the end of January. The other three great musicians are Marco Ruviaro at the mandolin, Fernando de La Rua at the 7-string guitar and Marco Zanotti at the pandeiro and cajon. They were also invited to perform at the first Choro Festival in Bruxelles which took place at the beginning of December 2017 and they were also invited to give a masterclass of Choro at the prestigious Hochschule für Musik of Nürnberg.
In 2019 she started another interesting collaboration with the great Brazilian pianist and multi-instrumentist Elizabeth Fadel: the project is based on Choro and Classical music. They already played together in Austria, Holland, Belgium and Germany and they are thinking about an album.
After an year of deep and careful research into contemporary Choro, in November 2020 she lauched her new CD with Choro de Rua, called Santo Bálsamo, that has been published by Visage Music and distributed by Egea. Among the composers featured on the album, in addition to Marco Ruviaro himself, there are some outstanding musicians on the current Brazilian music scene, including Hamilton de Holanda and André Mehmari. In this album there are two incredible guests and friends: Gabriele Mirabassi (clarinet) and Elizabeth Fadel (piano).
(For who is interested in booking a copy of the new CD Santo Bálsamo, please go to www.gofundme.com/choroderua-cd and choose your personal reward)
In 2021 she recorded in Paris a new album with her compositions and compositions of the Colombian musician Pedro Barrios, in quartet with two great Cuban musicians: Felipe Cabrera and Inor Sotolongo. The album will be released in 2024.
Between 2021 and 2023 she took part to some albums, among which:
1) Canto Estrangeiro (compositions of Giovanni Guaccero and lyrics of the Brazilian poet Eloi Stein) together with Tatiana Valle, Giovanni Guaccero, Marco Ruviaro, Bruno Marcozzi, Carlos Cesar Motta, Henrique Cazes, and some guests. Released by Encore Music (Italy) in May 2022.
2) Lua Adversa of Cristina Clara (Portugal) distributed by Sony Music Entertainment Portugal in November 2021, together with Cristina Clara, Pedro Lock, Edu Miranda, João Ventura and other musicians. The album presents revisited and original songs that reflect the contemporary vision on tradition by the Portuguese singer Cristina Clara, interpreted by musicians coming from jazz, traditional Portuguese music and Brazilian popular music.
In 2023 she started a new collaboration with the great Italian harpist Susanna Bertuccioli (first harp of the Maggio Fiorentino), with a beautiful Brazilian repertoire, in which she plays the flute and she sings.
In the same year, she also created her first autobiographic solo project “A marcha das Bárbaras”, voice, flute, loop station and small percussions.
In 2024 is going to be released the second album of Choro de Rua, entirely dedicated to the contemporary Choro.
Since march 2020 Barbara divides her time between Paris and Bologna.