Ciro Montanari
Percussion
Ciro Montanari was born in Ravenna in September 1979. Between the ages of ten and thirteen he began studying music, taking private piano lessons, and during his adolescence he developed a growing interest in music and sound experimentation. Alongside his experience as a singer in various local rock bands, he cultivated a strong curiosity for multiple musical traditions, both classical and popular, recognizing a particular affinity with Eastern percussion traditions.
At the age of twenty-two he began studying Indian percussion (tabla) with the renowned musician Pandit Sankha Chatterjee, former professor at Rabindra Bharati University in Kolkata (India). For around twenty years he lived between Italy and India (Kolkata) to study through the traditional guru–shishya approach, also working in Germany and Italy through seminars, including at the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice and within the Narada Studio Association.
From 2005 to 2009 he attended courses on “Extra-European Musical Traditions” at the Conservatory “Arrigo Pedrollo” in Vicenza under the direction of M° Federico Sanesi, deepening his knowledge of Hindustani classical music and acquiring the technical skills necessary to pursue a professional musical career.
He has worked as a musician across Europe, Morocco, the Middle East, and India, collaborating on artistic projects and performing at academic institutions and major world music festivals, including the Accademia Chigiana, the Conservatories of Naples (San Pietro a Majella) and Rome (Santa Cecilia), RAI Radio 3 (“La stanza della musica”), Trinity College Dublin, the University of Limerick (Department of Ethnomusicology), the Fes Festival in Morocco (with the Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI), the Fes Sufi Festival with Ustad Daud Khan Sadozay, the Konya Sufi Festival in Turkey, the Houdetsi Festival in Greece, the Aeon Festival in Greece, the Errichetta Festival in Italy, the Ravenna Festival, Les Nuits du Labyrinthe in Geneva, SOAS University of London, the University of Edinburgh, the Umeå Jazz Festival in Sweden, the Al Kamanjati Festival in Palestine, and the Haldia Music Festival in India.
Ciro participates in Trame Sonore 2026 as a member of Solanè.
