Nino D’Amico – Classical Guitarist
Nino D’Amico is an Italian guitarist from the generation that came up through the competition circuit and kept going. He began with Marco Caiazza and entered the San Pietro a Majella Conservatory in Naples, where he took his first-level diploma in 2019 with full marks and honours.
Naples, Pisa, Avellino
What followed reads like a straight line, which it rarely is in practice. A specialisation course at the Stefano Strata Academy in Pisa with Aniello Desiderio, on a scholarship as the best student of his year. Then Desiderio’s class at the Domenico Cimarosa Conservatory in Avellino, where his second-level diploma in 2022 came with 110/110, honours and an honorary mention. A postgraduate master’s in advanced interpretation with Lucio Matarazzo followed in 2023, and a second-level diploma in chamber music in 2026, again with full marks.
Four institutions, two principal teachers, and no interruption. That kind of continuity shows in the playing.
EuroStrings and the competitions
A win in Romania made him EuroStrings Artist for 2019/20, the point at which his concert career began in earnest. Since then he has taken more than fifty international prizes — Greece, Uppsala, Pleven and Plovdiv, Peja, Romania, China, Hungary, Germany, and a long list in Italy.
In 2021 came the Chitarra d’Oro as Revelation of the Year, the award that tends to mark the moment the Italian guitar world decides someone is worth watching. Angelo Gilardino, writing in Suonare News the following February, put it more directly: a born concert artist, made for the stage.
Two albums, and an edition
His first record, released in 2021 on DotGuitar/CD, is devoted entirely to Agustín Barrios Mangoré and was made with Aniello Desiderio, Angelo Gilardino and Lucio Matarazzo as part of the latter’s LM Project. Our introduction to Barrios covers the composer behind it.
The second, from 2024, takes on twelve sonatas by Domenico Scarlatti. This one is unusual: rather than play from an existing arrangement, D’Amico compared the official editions, made his own transcriptions and revisions, and published them with Ut Orpheus Edizioni. Recording Scarlatti on the guitar is one thing; producing the edition other guitarists will play from is another.
Teaching, juries, and D’Addario
He works with Italian Cultural Institutes abroad, tours the international festival circuit as a featured artist, gives masterclasses and sits on competition juries. In 2022 he was named a D’Addario Artist, and he has produced content with Guitar Salon International, the Omni Foundation and with us.
At Siccas Guitars
In 2026 he recorded a full concert for our channel, shortly after taking first prize at the Sinaia Guitar Festival in Romania. The programme runs from the classical period into the romantic: a Scarlatti sonata in A major, K. 208, in his own transcription published by Ut Orpheus; Napoléon Coste’s Fantaisie dramatique Op. 31, Le départ; the second Vals Venezolano by Antonio Lauro; Dionisio Aguado’s Rondo Op. 2 No. 2; Tárrega’s variations on the Carnival of Venice after Paganini; and Lágrima to close.
Two things stand out. The Scarlatti is the sonata as he edited it, so the recording and the printed edition come from the same hand. And the Coste and the Tárrega variations sit at opposite ends of what the nineteenth century asked of a guitarist: one a piece of theatre, the other a display of mechanism. He plays both as if neither were a technical exercise.
The instruments he used are listed piece by piece in the video description.
Discover more players in our profiles of great classical guitarists.
