ABOUT MASSIMO GUIDA

Toronto-based Italian-Canadian composer, theorist, educator, and copyist Massimo Guida was born in Modena, Italy, in 1990, and has lived in Canada since 2008. He completed his doctoral studies in composition at the University of Toronto in 2019, under the supervision of Professor Christos Hatzis. He previously also completed his undergraduate and Master’s studies in composition at the same institution, during which he studied composition with Professors Norbert Palej, Alexander Rapoport, Chan Ka Nin, and Gary Kulesha, as well as classical guitar under Eli Kassner. Described by La Scena Musicale in 2012 as a composer who writes with “a particularly strong melodic inspiration,” Massimo seeks to combine his fondness for Italian melodic lyricism and storytelling with a contemporary musical language in his works. A multi-award-winning composer, in 2015 he won the Violet Archer Prize, for his song cycle Confessions (2014), as well as the Mississauga Festival Choir Competition for his choral work Infant Joy (2013), which was written for the birth of his nephew. Massimo’s compositions and arrangements have been performed and read in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and the United States, by artists including the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra, the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brantford Symphony Orchestra, the North York Concert Orchestra, The Music4Life Ensemble, Fawn Chamber Creative, Slow Rise Music, The Odin Quartet, the St. Lawrence String Quartet, the Interro Quartet, the Bedford Trio, the Mississauga Festival Choir, the Fujita–Ko Duo, the GamUT Contemporary Ensemble, the University of Toronto Brass Ensemble, organist James Devor, Juno nominee Lindsay Schoolcraft, and pianist Alexander Panizza. He served as a Composer Fellow for the Hamilton Philharmonic Orchestra's 2024–25 season, and as the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra New Generation Affiliate Composer during the 2020–21 season, and also took part at the Orford Music Academy in 2020. One of his piano compositions, Fantasia Sopra Sei Temi di Puccini (2021), features on Panizza’s album Everything Waits for the Lilacs, which was released in March 2024. He is also proud to have composed the The Fanfare of Illumination in 2012 for the annual University College “alumni of Influence Gala.” 

 

For the screen, Massimo has also composed the music for promotional videos for the University of Toronto's "Boundless" campaign and the music for the U of T Faculty of Music’s Newsroom, as well as the music for the the 2015 word game "Lost for Words," released by OMG! Brews Games. Outside of composition, Massimo is passionate about music theory and education, and is also interested in blogging and web development. He balances composing and pursuing his research interests by working as a copyist and as a classical guitar, composition, and music theory teacher. He has received several academic awards throughout his studies for his analytical research on Italian twentieth century music. He was awarded a SSHRC CGS Master’s Scholarship for his Master’s research on the early works of Alfredo Casella, and multiple Ontario Graduate Scholarships for his doctoral research on Giacomo Puccini’s final opera Turandot (1926), the latter of which was presented at the the South-West Pacific Chapter Meeting of the American Musicological Society in 2024, and at the 2020 University of Toronto Graduate Music Conference, and which was supervised by Professor Steven Vande Moortele. A keen supporter of contemporary music in Canada, Massimo also served on the board of the Canadian League of Composers as an Ontario councillor between 2020 and 2022, and is an associate composer with the Canadian Music Centre, the Screen Composer's Guild of Canada, and the Society for Music Theory, as well as a Professional Member of the Canadian League of Composers.