Davide Barbarino (Enna, 1980) plays alto & soprano saxophones, clarinet, guitar, pedal steel guitar and electronics.
His musical activity is based mainly on ethnomusicology research, improvisation practices and electro-acoustic composition inspired by the Soundscape Studies.
After obtaining the master's degree in Cultural Anthropology and Ethnology, he has been involved in musical ecology projects and landscape-mind theory collaborating with the anthropologist, geographer and poet Matteo Meschiari on essays as Less is Home or Spazi Uniti d'America, developing from this peculiar perspective musical works as Mulga Dreaming, Alpine Suite, Field-notes for Sepik River, Learning from Lascaux, composed essentially from field-recordings and in which he tried to connect birds signals and songs with contemporary soundscapes, electronic and new music in a kind of sound shaping of the wild formula.
From 2010 he has focused his musical interventions, as a geo-musician, in unconventional spaces of making music, playing in places such as the necropolis of Pantalica, the archaeological site of Morgantina, the Adamello Park in Valcamonica, the Etruscans Paths inside of the Sasseto Monumental Wood, at the Grotte della Gurfa in Alia, at the Botanical Garden of Palermo, on the Ligne Rouge of St. Philomene (Fr) among others, creating site-specific recording sessions and publishing several works.
In 2016 the publication of the PANTALICA (with Tim Hodgkinson and Gandolfo Pagano) released for the Italian label Setola di Maiale, was reported by the Italian critic Ettore Garzia among the most interesting of the year in the genre of field-recordings albums.
In 2017 he showed his visual art in two different personal exhibitions: Ink Poems, a selection of ten b/w ink paintings in which he attempted to combine calligraphy with mineralogy and geology perspective starting by the idea of Ralph Waldo Emerson that language is fossil poetry (PATIC Gallery, Munich); Laboratorio di Ecologia Acquatica, in Palerme, a collection of 25 watercolors inspired by Henri Michaux's reflection on cinematic painting process (Libreria del Mare, Palermo).
In 2019 he released two new site-specific works: Duets, with the great american bass player and composer Mark Dresser, a collection of recordings made in different spaces around Sicily, and Botanical Studies, together with the German multi-reed player Frank Gratkowski, a suggestive recording made at the Botanical garden of Palerme: both works were considered once again by the Italian critic Ettore Garzia among the most interesting albums of the year.
For over ten years he has collaborated with Curva Minore, the hyperactive association for the heterodox musical divulgation founded by Lelio Gannetto and Gianni Gebbia and based in Palermo.
In the scene of contemporary and improvised music he studied, worked and performed with
Tim Hodgkinson, Alvin Curran, John Tilbury, Barre Phillips, Mark Dresser, Roberto Bellatalla, Adam Bohman, Mike Cooper, Fabrizio Spera, Gene Coleman, Stefano Zorzanello, Amy Denio, Gino Robair, Eugene Chadbourne, Frank Gratkowski, Gianni Gebbia, Sebi Tramontana, Thomas Lehn, Andreas Wagner, Ab Baars, Wolter Wierbos, Thomas Heberer, Trevor Brown, Irene Kepl, Keja Ho Kramer, Natacha Muslera, Michel Doneda, Laurent Charles, Emanuel Cremer, Lionel Garcin, Michel & Jeannette Lambert, François Wong, Jean-Marc Montera, Elmar Guantes, Birgit Yew, Willehad Grafenhorst & Fine Kwiatowski, Ayankoko, Fa Cesario, Jean-Francois Pauvros, eRikm, Luc Houtkamp, Mezz Gacano, Alex Maguire, Sarah Gail Brand, Bernard Lubat, Jean-Brice Godet...