My hobbies

Jazz Music

My favorite style is Be Bop, but I also like Latin Jazz and Fusion. I play guitar since I was 8. I started playing songs from Pink Floyd and Santana (Carlos Santana was my first idol). Then, when I was 15, I received as a gift a record of Wes Montgomery. It was a big change! I immediately loved his sound and I wanted to play like him. So I started to learn his solos from records, note by note, chord by chord. I had no idea about what I was playing, but it was fun.

Then, when I started playing more seriously in some jazz groups, I realized that I had to learn harmony in order to improvise and create my own phrases. So I took lessons and I studied hard for a couple of years. During this period, I listened to many records and various musicians that, directly or indirectly, have influenced my style. Among the guitar players, I was inspired by Wes Montgomery, Pat Martino, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, George Benson, Franco Cerri, and many others. But I also took ideas from other musicians, such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Lee Morgan, Oscar Peterson, Bill Evans, just to mention some of them. More recently, I found jazz-fusion music very attractive, especially from musicians such as Lee Ritenour, Bireli Lagrene, and Mike Stern.

Groups I played with:

Movies

Here is a list of 30 movies that left a deep sign into my brain.

Science Fiction

  1. 2001: A Space Odyssey [Stanley Kubrick, 1968]
  2. Close Encounters of the Third Kind [Steven Spielberg, 1977]
  3. The Thing (La Cosa) [John Carpenter, 1982]
  4. The Fly (La Mosca) [David Cronenberg, 1986]
  5. Aliens [James Cameron, 1986]
  6. Robocop [Paul Verhoeven, 1987]
  7. Predator [John McTiernan, 1987]
  8. Total Recall [Paul Verhoeven, 1990]
  9. Terminator 2: Judgment Day [James Cameron, 1991]
  10. Contact [Robert Zemeckis, 1997]
  11. Matrix [Lana & Lilly Wachowski, 1999]
  12. The Thirteenth Floor [Josef Rusnak, 1999]
  13. Avatar [James Cameron, 2009]
  14. Automata [Gabe Ibáñez, 2014]
  15. Ex Machina [Alex Garland, 2014]

Non Science Fiction

  1. The Graduate [Mike Nichols, 1967]
  2. One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest [Milos Forman, 1975]
  3. Marathon Man [John Schlesinger, 1976]
  4. The Even Can Wait [Warren Beatty & Buck Henry, 1978]
  5. The Shining [Milos Forman, 1980]
  6. Scarface [Brian De Palma, 1983]
  7. Nikita [Luc Besson, 1990]
  8. Scent of Woman [Martin Brest, 1992]
  9. Leon [Luc Besson, 1994]
  10. The Fugitive [Andrew Davis, 1993]
  11. As Good As It Gets [James L. Brooks, 1997]
  12. La leggenda del pianista sull'oceano [Giuseppe Tornatore, 1998]
  13. The Big Kahuna [John Swanbeck, 2000]
  14. Space Cowboys [Clint Eastwood, 2000]
  15. Il lato positivo [David O. Russell, 2012]

Other diversions

Other "out-of-track" writings

  • Can a Machine Ever Become Self-aware?

  • Potrà mai una macchina diventare autocosciente?

  • Artificial Consciousness: Utopia or Real-Possibility?

  • Coscienza Artificiale: Missione Impossibile?

  • Coscienza Artificiale: implicazioni per l'umanità

  • Artificial Consciousness: Hazardous Questions (and Answers)

  • What really happened on Mars?

  • What really happened on the Moon?







  • Gino "il bagnino"