Dave Cipriani is a highly accomplished guitarist, songwriter and composer based in Ojai, CA who performs on 7-string classical & electric, and (20-string) Indian slide guitar.
He has self-produced 4 CD’s and has received awards from the Maryland State Arts Council and the Baltimore Office of Promotions and the Arts. Dave's diverse background include studies with jazz great Charlie Byrd, classical guitarist Christopher Parkening, sitar master Jai Kishor, and Indian Slide guitar pioneer Pandit Barun Kumar Pal, a senior disciple of Ravi Shankar.
Dave holds an MFA in North Indian Music at California Institute of the Arts, which included studies with Balkan/classical/flamenco guitarist Miroslav Tadic, Indian masters Ustad Aashish Khan and Pandit Swapan Chaudhuri, and classical guitarist Stuart Fox.
Dave leads the world fusion band Mahadev, and performs at concert venues and yoga studios in the LA area.
Personal Statement:
I have been on a constant quest to connect with deep spiritual/music roots while still being in the modern world. I try to find out what makes different aesthetic approaches speak within different musical and cultural systems and then combine them into something new that can still speak to each individual system with depth and authority, while remaining evocative for the musician and listener. On a practical level, this has meant independent study of african and folk music, and studying with masters of jazz, classical guitar, balkan and indian music often at very high levels.
Studying Indian classical has been pivotal to this, even as it has sharpened my relation with non-Indian music. From just a musical point of view, it has broadened the way I hear music, making connections to different styles of music that have hidden roots and connections, opening up new ideas of melody and rhythm. It has certainly also changed my ideas about how music is recorded and transmitted from one musician to another, and its relation to audiences, creativity and spirituality. But more importantly, it has helped to me to learn to listen with my heart on a much deeper level, and made me more interested in music that does seek to speak, rather than obfuscate, the emotions that every human being experiences.
This desire also springs from my years of studying Buddhist meditation, and trying to understand how it relates to creativity. In meditation we seek to be completely honest with ourselves about who we are, warts and all, and to stay present with that, non-aggressively, non-judgmentally, compassionately. This reveals tenderness and brilliance that we all hold as our basic being. This is what I am trying to speak to and reveal to myself and others in the music.