Valentino Zucchiatti

Valentino Zucchiatti was born in Udine in 1961. He studied bassoon with the masters Voiko Cesar and Gilberto Grassi. In 1979 he moved to Turin to attend computer courses at the university. Here he met the maestro Vincenzo Menghini with whom he graduated three years later with full marks and honors.
He immediately distinguished himself in some international competitions. In 1983 he attended the specialization courses at the Portogruaro Academy with Ovidio Danzi. In 1984 he won the first bassoon contest in the Teatro alla Scala orchestra, thus becoming the first bassoon of the homonymous Filarmonica. Since then he has collaborated on all the tours, recordings and television recordings of the prestigious orchestra.
In 1986 he went to Philadelphia to study with Bernard Garfield, the first bassoon of the Philadelphia Orchestra. He continued his artistic training with Brian Pollard, for fifty years bassoonist soloist of the Concertgebouw Royal Orchestra. He collaborates with important chamber music groups, also together with some soloists of the Wiener Philharmoniker, Berliner Philharmoniker, Bayerischer Rundfunk Orch., Of the Bayerisches Staatsoper and of the Orch. de Paris. He was a member of judging commissions in numerous international competitions. In 1989 he carried out an important solo tour in the main cities of Japan, also holding conferences in some important universities.
In '92 he gave a recital to I.D.R.S. Convention in Frankfurt and was part of the jury of the "Ferdinand Gillette International Competition". In March 1993 he recorded as a soloist a Vivaldi concert with Riccardo Muti and the La Scala Philharmonic for EMI. In 2002 he made an important tour with the Friuli Venezia Giulia orchestra that led him to perform as a soloist at the Musikverein in Vienna and La Scala.
For 16 years he has been a lecturer at the prestigious training course at Riva del Garda and is regularly invited to Hamamatsu's International Master Classes. From 2002 to 2004 he taught the summer courses of Città di castello. He has been a lecturer at the annual orchestral high-level academies of the Teatro alla Scala in Milan and of the Arturo Toscanini foundation in Parma, at the Ca 'Zenobio Academy in Treviso, as well as in the senior biennials of the Conservatories of Udine and Padua. He regularly holds master classes at the Universities of Tokyo Geidai, Stuttgart and Würzburg. He currently teaches at the University of Maastricht and Cologne.