INTERVIEW
D”’Agostino
Peppino
BY GAYLA DRAKE PAUL
Peppino D’Agostino grew up in Turin, Italy,
a city known for sports cars and other holy
relics. It’s no surprise that D’Agostino was
inspired to take up the guitar (which he
drives like a finely tuned Alfa Romeo) as a
child in church. His interests ranged from
classical to folk to pop, from Irish and Italian
traditional music to Brazilian jazz. He assembled the moving parts—chops, theory and
a gift for melody—through his teens, and in
1981 when he was in his early twenties, his
first CD, Bluerba, was released.
He is now considered a pioneer of acoustic
guitar, breaking new ground with technique
while remaining obsessively committed to
musicality and melody. Alternate tunings, tapping, drumming on the guitar, detuning with
amazing precision in the middle of a song
and making the guitar sound like everything
from a bass to a berimbau (a Brazilian percussion instrument) are all tricks that slip from his
sleeve on any ordinary night. He’s also been
known to play a composition by Gioachino
Rossini followed by Antonio Carlos Jobim,
followed by the theme from The Good, the
Bad and the Ugly. And he does it all with joy,
humor and pinpoint accuracy.
