Santa Venerina INTERVIEW TO THE MUSICIAN AND COMPOSITOR GESUELE SCIACCA

from the left, M° Gesuele Sciacca and I

Gesuele Sciacca from Acireale, an estimated medical director, is a refined composer of music for orchestra, music therapy and music for the poems of the classics, which means "poems sung without turning them into canzonets”. With his expressive voice and his unfailing guitar, accompanied by musicians, including members of his family, he manages to charm the crowded audiences .

Can we consider music as an artistic activity? “Music is not only an artistic activity but is primarily an extraordinary method of communication. In the ancient Greek philosophy the first consideration of the music is in the Pythagorean school that discovers the relationship between music and mathematics. Our brain, through a mathematical calculation, recognizes when the external frequencies are related to each other in order to represent a well-defined flow of information, capable to evoke memories and emotions. It is not a coincidence that the philosopher Leibniz says in a letter to the German mathematician Goldbach Christian that 'music is an occult practice of arithmetic, where the soul doesn’t know to be calculating'. All the Universe, from the macro to the microcosm, has physical and mathematical aspects which obey exactly to the same laws that govern the relationship between sounds, and since the mission of science and philosophy is to bring back the particular to the universal, it will be possible to find the harmonic principle that governs the world through music. The music beauty, as the concept of beauty in general, corresponds to the intuition of harmony, as evidenced by the fact that the sensitive pleasure of listening to music lies in feeling the harmony”. Where do your musical roots sink? “My musical roots descend from the jazz, because when I was young I started to study the jazz guitar. At the age of eighteen, to enrol in Medicine, I gave up a contract with an important record label. As soon as I ended the college I approached the music through the music therapy; I love all the music, but I cannot hide a certain fondness for the singer-songwriter music”. Do you feel more medico or more musician? “For me, medicine is an integrant part of my life. Thanks to the fact of being a doctor I can be a real musician and through the music I can be a real doctor, because music besides of being a powerful therapy, it keeps alive the ability to be sensitive to emotions and without these, I believe that we can’t be real doctors”. Is it true that in your concerts you perform for free? “Yes, I do not even take a penny, I also do concerts for non-profit associations”. Salvatore Cifalinò