Fernando Grillo double bass soloist and composer, is one of the most original protagonists of the music of our times. He has initiated various avant-garde music and created new techniques of sound production and musical expression for string instruments, for which he is one of the greatest exponents. His visual aspect, his gesture that precedes the sound and his "sonorous sculptures" give a modern stamp to his interpretations, proposing a new listening psychology. An unprecedented timbre quality, instrumental creativity, spiritual awakening, musical talent, a lyrical bow, so realistically present in his composition, echo the past as much as the present. Discipline is the key word, and discipline is what attracted Grillo to music from the beginning. Born in 1945 in Foggia in the south of Italy. Grillo took up the guitar as a teenager. But he was not interested in mimicking the jazz or pop heroes of the day. Instead, be would patiently practice chord scales for hours to obtain complete control over every point of the fingerboard. His intense devotion to music did not go unnoticed, and it was suggested that he try the double bass. After lessons with Lucio Buccarella, bassist with I Musici di Roma, Grillo took up formal studies with Corrado Penta at the music conservatory in Perugia. Grillo's fascination with Bach and his conviction that the Cello Suites had to be played on the instrument they were originally conceived for led to additional cello studies with Amedeo Baldovino, while his interest in composition was stimulated by Valentino Bucchi, then head of Perugia's conservatory. But while building a firm and very traditional foundation for his bass technique, Grillo pursued a second, clandestine course of bass studies, starting from scratch, tabula rasa. This "ricerca fondamentale", as he now calls it, was a thorough and highly disciplined 'research programme' into the instrument's sonic possibilities, starting with the infinite variety of the sounds on the open string, progressing via the multi-facetted world of bowed and fingered harmonics to a whole palette of previously uncharted sounds.
For many years, Grillo's research remained largely private, with hardly any connection to Italy's contemporary music scene. In the early 1970s, however, Grillo met the Roman composer Giacinto Scelsi. Scelsi, who regarded sound as a living continuum not to be divided into separate notes or to be subjected to mathematical serial procedures, created one-notepieces such as the Quattro pezzi per orchestra su una nota sola and a series of string quartets, in which the music drifts micro-tonally around a few central pitches. Scelsi realized that Grillo's research complemented his own explorations of the 'sound within the sound', as the composer termed it, and he invited the young virtuoso to collaborate with him. The cooperation lasted two years, resulting in various pieces for strings, many of which have yet to be issued and recorded.
Following the successes of this cooperation, Grillo took part in the prestigious Gaudeamus Competition for Interpreters of Contemporary Music in the Netherlands in 1975 and won first prize. The year after, he was awarded the Kranichsteiner Musikpreis for interpretation of the Darnrstadt vacation workshops in Germany. Harry Halbreich, then director of the contemporary music festival in Royan, was so impressed that he commissioned a whole series of double bass pieces to be premiered by Grillo. These included pieces such as Iannis Xenakis' Theraps. Christian Wolff's String Bass Exercise .from Bandiera Rossa and Klaus Huber's Erinnere Dich an G - now landmarks of contemporary bass literature. Further works by Earle Brown, Aldo Clementi, Henri Pousseur, Witold Szalonek, Iaucu Dunitrescu and Luca Lombardi were also written with Grillo's approach to the bass in mind.
Grillo's work during the 1970s completely changed the perception of the contemporary double bass in Europe; presenting an impressive alternative to the classical bass virtuosity developed by the masters Dragonetti and Bottesini. Grillo's approach is most succinctly demonstrated in his compositions, which include solo bass pieces such as Itesi (1972/78), Paperoles (1974), Gstüss (1975) and Soror mystica (1978/79). Over the past three decades, Grillo has also created an impressive body of work for other string instruments, chamber en- semble, orchestra, and for dance.
Which is not to say that Grillo has retired from music, or from the double bass, In recent years Grillo has performed extensively in word-and-music programmes with the Italian actor Carmtelo Bene, and he has also cooperated with musicians from the world of free improvisation, such as German reed player Wolfgang Fuchs and his King Übü Örchestrü Improvisation is an important element of Grillo's music, though at the same time the bassist maintains: 'Even when I improvise, I always think compositionally.
In 2000, Grillo was appointed chair of double bass at the Santa Cecilia Conservatory in Rome; this should guarantee that his unique way of looking at the bass will find many more followers yet.
"The Buddha of Double Bass"
Karlheiz Stockhausen
"Grillo is impressive! Sometimes it seems that his instrument has six strings, and sometimes even thirty"
Luciano Berio