ABOUT MASSIMO GUIDA

Toronto-based Italian-Canadian composer, theorist, educator, full-stack developer, 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 as a composer who writes with “a particularly strong melodic inspiration” by La Scena Musicale in 2012, Massimo has experience in composing music for a variety of different ensembles, genres, and media. In 2015, his song cycle Confessions (2014) was the recipient of the Violet Archer Prize, while his choral work Infant Joy (2013) won the Mississauga Festival Choir Competition. Massimo’s compositions and arrangements have been performed in Canada, England, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea, and the United States by artists and members of ensembles such as the Scarborough Philharmonic Orchestra, the Brantford Symphony Orchestra, the North York Concert Orchestra, Alexander Panizza, the Music4Life Ensemble, the Odin Quartet, the Interro Quartet, the Bedford Trio, and Lindsay Schoolcraft. Outside of composition, Massimo is deeply interested in music theory, analysis, film music, and web development; he also works as a copyist, arranger, music theorist, and educator. Moreover, he has been the recipient of several academic awards throughout his studies, including a SSHRC CGS Master’s Scholarship for his Master’s research on the early music of the Italian twentieth century composer Alfredo Casella, and multiple Ontario Graduate Scholarships for his doctoral research on tonal structure in Giacomo Puccini’s final opera Turandot (1926), which was supervised by Professor Steven Vande Moortele. Massimo had also composed the music for the U of T Faculty of Music's Newsroom, as well as the Fanfare of Illumination for the annual University College "Alumni of Influence Gala," An advocate for Canadian contemporary music, he served as an Ontario Councillor on the board of the national council of the Canadian League of Composers between 2020–22.