Valerio Celentano
graduated in guitar with top marks and honours from the Conservatorio 'G. Martucci' in Salerno under the guidance of Maestro Antonio Grande. He studied with artists such as Alirio Diaz, Mario Gangi, Pavel Steidl, David Russell, Alvaro Company, Carlo Marchione and Edoardo Isaac. He continued his studies with Jyrki Myllärinen, Frédéric Zigante and Oscar Ghiglia. Both as a soloist and in a duo, he has won numerous competitions, both national - "Ansaldi-Servetti" Mondovì (Cuneo), 2nd place at the Premio delle Arti 2011 - and international - 2nd place at the Concorso Chitarristico Internazionale di Gargnano 2009, and at the "Alirio Diaz"- Rome 2013, 3rd place "E. Pujol" 2010 Sassari, Sanremo International Guitar Competition 2015.

He also holds a degree in Modern Literature with a thesis on musical aesthetics entitled 'The Neapolitan Musical Seventeenth Century through the Fashion of the Spanish Guitar' and obtained a Biennial Master's Degree in Ancient Music at the Naples Conservatory under the guidance of maestros Toni Florio and Franco Pavan, with a thesis on the musical relationship between Kapsperger and Gesualdo da Venosa. With regard to this very topic, he was invited to play at the Castello Sforzesco in Milan the admirable copy of the Spanish guitar that belonged to the Prince of Venosa, a specimen made by the luthier Antonio Dattis. At the same time, he continued to deepen his knowledge of performance practice on the theorbo and baroque guitar with Massimo Lonardi at the 'Vittadini' Higher Institute of Music Studies in Pavia and, as a continuist, he had the opportunity to collaborate with artists such as Renata Fusco, Pino de Vittorio, with the baroque ensemble Accademia Reale, with the Milanese ensemble Effimere Corde and with the ScarlattiLab orchestra. He was the creator and artistic director of the Barocco summer music festival in Baronissi from 2016 to 2020.

He is passionately dedicated to musicological research and transcriptions for guitar: in 2017 his elaborations for solo guitar (published by Da Vinci Publishing -Osaka and by Armelin-Padova) were finalists at the International Competition in Thessaloniki (IGFT 2017).

In the chamber music field, in 2018 he published with double bass player Marco Cuciniello -Chi Asso duo- the album Sul Sur - A South American Anthology for the dotGuitar.it label, reworking music by guitarist and non-guitar composers from South America inspired by both the baroque and the more strictly folkloric tradition.