Ugo Santangelo

“Music is not my life, it’s just a way to express what I’m living.”I’m an Italian musician living in Norway since 2006. I considerate myself a jazz guitarist because my musical background comes mainly from that tradition, but I’m not a jazz “fundamentalist”. I’m against every kind of fundamentalism. I experiment myself in a lot of different sort of music and my compositions are the place where different experiences converge. In my opinion creativity means ability to imagine and put things together in a personal way and it should never be limited. Generally, the purpose of creativity could be the esthetical pleasure or the technical progress. In my case the creativity is just a way to explore and to fill my life up. My music comes out from my impatience, from my necessity to not feel myself bored. Even if I always try to give something to the others my music is mostly a narcissistic and egoist gesture. Creativity is a way to discover myself, creativity is a way to feel myself better than what I’m. I’m a dreamer and therefore a loser. My incapacity to define myself in an univocal way, in the music as well as in the life, is at the same time my damnation and my salvation. I’m a jazz musician in the way I conceive the improvisation as a basic part of my musical expression as well as a method to compose. I’m a jazz musician because in a larger sense “jazz” means nothing and I mean nothing. I love to be inspired by images and I like the way the music can add meanings to images, therefore I love to write soundtracks. I’m not a collector of papers and I didn’t win any prizes. I’m graduated at the University Federico II of Naples, where I studied music theory, music history, art history, literature. I lived and studied in Italy (Naples and Rome), France (Caen) and Norway (Bergen). I studied electric guitar with Mimmo Langella in Naples, Dario Lapenna at Saint Louis College of Music in Rome, Thomas Dahl in Bergen at Griegakademiet, the conservatory where I’m still a student. I attended several music courses and laboratories in arrangement, composition, jazz theory in Naples, Rome and Siena with Giulio Martino, Michel Audisso, Paolino dalla Porta, Tommaso Lama, Pierpaolo Principato. I work as guitar teacher at the John Bauer Gymnaset in Bergen. I wrote music for some animations and publicities. In Bergen I play guitar in several bands as “De andre sostrene”, “Scotoma”, “Malaparola”, “Paco” and I sing as bass in the “Bergen Philharmonic Choir”.