SANTI COSTANZO
Guitarist, Composer, Improviser
SANTI COSTANZO
Guitarist, Composer, Improviser
Santi Costanzo is an italian guitarist, improviser and composer based in Catania.
Santi Costanzo has found his most suitable area of study in the search for an aesthetic and linguistic coexistence based on free improvisation and on compositional elements coming from musique concrète, jazz, contemporary classical music, and other musical genres.
Over the years, he has worked together with musicians in various formations, from small combos to big bands and in the latter case he has been directed even by important names in international jazz, among whom Keith Tippett and Mathias Ruegg.
Also committed in pure sound experimentation, meant as the glue between a multitude of art forms, he has voiced different works by Italian authors: "Il gabbiano di Torrefiamma", by writer Silvia Bellia; the poetry booklet "Lo sfasciacarrozze", by poet Riccardo Raimondo; and the readings of the collection "Il potere dei coriandoli", by Antonino Di Giovanni, Giovanni Caviezel and Chiara Tinnirello. He is also concerned with sound design of works of art, such as those of photographer Francesco Di Giovanni, whose different private works he curated music. He has composed music for the theatre: together with composer Ferdinando D'Urso, he has performed and composed the musical score for the play "Roberto Zucco", staged by the laboratory Molo2 and managed by director Gioacchino Palumbo.
In 2016, he records his first album "Deeprint" for the Improvvisatore Involontario label. Awarded with honorable mention among the best albums of 2016 in the Avant Music News journal, the album has been recorded and performed together with the saxophonist, flutist and composer Carlo Cattano, with saxophonist Fabio Tiralongo and drummer Alessandro Borgia.
In 2018, he began the Autocracy of Deception series with Autocracy of Deception, Vol. I, released by the Setola di Maiale label. The album marked the beginning of a more radical investigation into electronic and experimental music, developed through found objects, prepared guitar and alternative approaches to the instrument. The guitar remained the central source of the work, increasingly treated not only as an instrument but as material to be transformed, extended and reconfigured.
In 2019, together with Alessandro Grasso and Riccardo Napoli, he founded Accidentale Trio, further developing this research through collective improvisation and experimental approaches to sound. The trio released Interazione 001, their first and only album, for the Sopra le Parti label. In the same year, he took part in Elettracore, an international electronic music event held in Catania, which brought together musicians and artists from different countries and approaches to electronic and experimental sound.
During the pandemic period, between 2020 and 2021, he produced ÉIDOS and Wired Circle, an album and an EP in which his instrumental language expanded beyond the guitar to include synthesizers and laptop-based electronic processing. Even within this broader setup, the guitar continued to function as the main point of departure for composition and sound transformation.
After a period away from releasing new material, while continuing to study and develop his musical language, his research gradually moved toward cassette tape and analogue manipulation. In April 2026 he released Autocracy of Deception, Vol. II: Ciclica, in which guitar, electronics and tape became increasingly interconnected through repetition, degradation, layering and manipulation.
In September 2026 he released Quello che resta, a work outside the Autocracy of Deception series and dedicated to the death of his father. The album develops his work with cassette tape further, using progressive deterioration, changes in speed, layering and fragmentation as part of the compositional process itself. Throughout the record, the guitar remains the primary musical source, while tape gradually alters, erodes and reshapes the material until parts of the original sound are reduced to traces.