Guitar

Maurizio Geri

Guitarist, singer, composer. His first experiences, linked to the recovery of the traditional repertoire of the Pistoia mountains, led him, in the early 1980s, to meet the researcher singer Caterina Bueno with whom he played for about fifteen years.
The meeting with fellow citizen and accordionist Riccardo Tesi was fundamental, as in 1994 he founded the quartet BANDITALIANA. With this group he recorded five albums, four of which were original productions based on the Tuscan and Emilian traditions, the ideal closing of a circle where anthropological rigor meets composition and arrangement.

The “Maurizio Geri Swingtet” was born in 1995, a pioneering group of Italian jazz-manouche that immediately proposed an original repertoire (four albums were released under its name). Stylistic research is refined in step with the repertoire, in a creative process that incorporates old and new and delivers a formally coherent and entirely personal musical universe.

The originality of his proposal distinguishes him from the myriad of Reinhardt emulators, he never pursues an exclusively technical objective, it is probably the planning and artistic value that will lead him to receive numerous international awards including participation in the 2000 “Django Reinhardt” festival in Samois sur Seine (the only Italian group to date).

In 2015 he edited the release of the first method in Italian entitled “La chitarra swing-manouche” (Ed. Fingerpicking.net) also translated into English. He has collaborated with numerous musicians from the Italian word, jazz and pop scene and has participated in the most important festivals in Europe, Canada, Argentina, Australia and Japan, national and international radio broadcasts, theatrical performances and film soundtracks.

Recently, he collaborated with Elena Ledda, Lucilla Galeazzi, and other names in Italian world music to create the show “A sud di Bella Ciao,” which was a huge success throughout Europe. His guitar style blends themes from Mediterranean ethnic music with the phrasing and improvisation of swing-manouche music. In the last period he has dedicated himself to writing songs (Perle d’Appennino, Visage 2016, La Strada, self-produced 2025, Canzoni da bosco self-produced 2026) and collaborates on the web broadcasts “TG Suite” with Davide Riondino. Since 2018 he has been the artistic director of the Toscana Django festival.