DAVIDE REBUFFA developed his first passionate interest in music through the electric guitar; he graduated in classical guitar at the Conservatorio of Genoa after having studied with Dora Filippone and Paolo Paolini. During his guitar studies he soon became interested in the lute and baroque guitar repertoire. He taught himself the lute following historical treatises and eventually devoted himself to the research and performance of medieval, renaissance and baroque music on period instruments. In the following years he further developed his technique and performing practice with the lute, theorbo, vihuela and early guitars, under the guidance of Hopkinson Smith.
Since the early 80s he was one of the first Italian lute players exploring and performing the medieval repertoire with medieval lutes; early arabic-andalusian music of the Maghreb with 'ûd; baroque mandolins and calichon/mandora using the historical performing techniques described in original sources. He has performed as soloist as well as an ensemble musician and continuo player with some of today's most respected conductors and ensembles, being invited to give recitals at many well known International Festivals in Europe, North Africa and Asia.
He has taken part in ensemble recording for Pentagramma, Stradivarius, Glossa, Brilliant Classics, Tactus including radio and television broadcasts (RAI 3, RAI 2, TRT 3).
He is founder and director of the Lyocorne Consort (1979), Ensemble Al Farabi (1987), Centro Studi Piemontese di Musica Antica (1991), International Early Music Festival Bugella Civitas in Biella (1994), Accademia Bugella Civitas (1994), Accademia dei Desiosi (2004), I Suonatori Sconcertati (2005), Ensemble Schifanoia (2006), La Compagnia dei Temperamenti Ineguali (2007) and together with Lorenzo Girodo he directed for more than thirty years the medieval music group Ensemble Clerici Vagantes.
Together with italian mandolin virtuoso Mauro Squillante, he recently founded the The Early Mandolin Academy, the first international post-graduate course on the early mandolins, giving masterclasses, concerts and publishing a series of recordings performed with all types of historical survining mandolins of the XVII and XVIII centuries.
''His all-round accomplishment within the musical sphere extends to other domains, including musicological and organological research. It is this quality of being informed and ispired by practitioner experience that makes his musicological writings so unusually original and penetrating''.
In addition to his activities as a performer, Davide Rebuffa has published articles and has been invited to give lectures on organology and musical iconography of the lute by the major international Universities and Music Institutes, including Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. As musicologists he also collaborates with Centre d'Etudes Supérieures de la Renaissance dell'Université ''François-Rabelais'' di Tours (CNRS). As researcher and collector of historical plucked strings instruments he edited the catalogues of various antique instruments exhibitions: (co-authored with Lorenzo Girodo: Vedere la Musica, Biella 2000; Gli arnesi della Musica, Rivoli 2003; co-authored with Gianni Accornero: The Guitar: Four centuries of Masterpieces, Alessandria 2008); C. A. Carutti, Passioni di un Collezionista, Cremona 2010); co-authored with Dinko Fabris Liuti del Mediterraneo, Bari 2010. He is the author of the first italian book on the lute history which is considered an international reference essay for the study of the organological transformations all the instruments of the lute family: Il Liuto, (L'Epos, Palermo, 2012).
Davide Rebuffa has recently been active extensively performing the baroque repertoire with very rare surviving historical lutes (Buchstetter, Wenger), 5-course guitars (Sellas and Voboam) and mandolins (Smorsone, Franchi, Maraffi, Presbler, Ferrari, Nonemacher) from his own ad other private collections.
''Such combination of knowledge and experiences on historical instruments places him, as a practical musician, in an ideal position to apply the findings of musicology. Conversely, it places him, as a musicologist and teacher, in an ideal position to arrive at insights and judgements provoked by his activity as a performer''.
His interpretations - though based on a strict reading of the original sources and historical performing practice- try to offer to the modern listener the emotional experience as close as possible to the spirit of the musical language of the past, through a careful perception of the the context and the social destination of music making, aiming to penetrate the spirit of the musical language's emotional significance and giving vitality and deepening the expression through the practice of decoration and improvisation.
He is currently teaching lute, early guitars and early mandolin at the Centro Studi Piemontese di Musica Antica in Biella and he is Professor of Medieval Lute and Baroque Mandolino at the Conservatorio ''A. Pedrollo'' in Vicenza.