Just a few words about the musicians that constitute the duo Choro na Manga: the mandolinist Marco Ruviaro and the guitarist Fabrizio Forte.
Marco Ruviaro was born in San Paolo (Brazil) and started his musical studies at the age of 11. He played guitar with the guitarist and composer Paulo Porto Alegre, with Sidney Molina, a member of the guitars quartet Quaternaglia, with Giacomo Bartoloni, guitarist and composer and Professor at the Unesp (Estate University of San Paolo) and with Luciano Lima, ex 7 chords-guitar player of the Orchestra “à Base de Corda” of Curitiba. He learned the mandolin self-taught.
Marco Ruviaro, bandolinista
He attended many choro workshops headed by such professors as Pedro Amorim, Joel Nascimento, Luiz Otávio Braga, Jayme Vignoli, Maurício Carrilho and Luciana Rabello. In Brazil he has been part of different groups of Choro, Samba and Bossa Nova. Besides the Choro na Manga duo he is carrying out different projects of Brazilian music in Europe. He took a degree in classical guitar at the Public University of San Paolo (Unesp).
Some tips about the mandolin
The mandolin has an Italian origin but it earned a prominent role in popular music in Brazil thanks to the contribute of two of the greatest Brazilian musicians, Luperce Miranda and Jacob Bittencourt, better known as Jacob do Bandolim.
Especially from the ‘40s, Jacob brought the mandolin to a leading role in Choro music, such as the flute and the clarinet, affecting all the mandolinists’ following generations. An excellent “Brazilian school” of mandolin was created, totally based upon Jacob’s way of playing.
Fabrizio Forte, born near by Torino (Italy), he started his musical studies at the age of 15, playing the guitar and the bass as self-taught. After having played blues and jazz for some years, in 1997 he got his first contact with Brazilian music through his studies about the great composer and interpreter João Gilberto. From that moment on, he dedicated himself quite uniquely to Choro music, Bossa Nova and Brazilian music in general.
Fabrizio Forte, violonista
In Torino he has collaborated as arranger and composer in many musical projects with Simon Papa, Giovanna Gattuso, Roberto Taufic, Ricardo da Silva Souza and Gilson Silveira. At the moment, besides Choro na Manga, he plays Brazilian music in a duo with the singer Deborah Nurchis. He got a Diploma in Classical Guitar at the Conservatorio of Novara.
NOTE: From April 2012, Luigi Gentile replaces Fabrizio Forte at the guitar.
Some tips about the guitar
The guitar is the most popular instrument in Brazil and it’s used in all the genres of Brazilian music. In Choro music and Samba the seven chords guitar counterpoints are very important, a peculiarity of these two musical genres.
The master and fonder of this guitar style is Horondino Silva, better known as Dino 7 Cordas, who in the ‘40s started to reproduce with a guitar, the phrases and the bass lines that normally were executed by other instruments, as the tuba and the ophicleide. From then on, the seven chords guitar has taken the role of performing the “baixarias”, that is the low-pitched melodic lines that today are so essential in Choro music and Samba.
