Biografia

Giovanna Riboli
Titular organist of the Onofrio Zeffirini da Cortona organ (1558) at the Badia Fiorentina (Florence), curator of 17 illuminated manuscripts in square notation (Gregorian and Fratto chant) dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries in the same monastery, and vocal coach of the choir of the Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem.

She is an organist, musician, and musicologist with wide experience, with a career spanning performance, choral conducting, historical research, and teaching. Her activity is distinguished by a profound knowledge of sacred music and by her commitment to the enhancement of both historical and contemporary organ repertoires. Her musicological and performance research also includes Gregorian, Fratto, and Beneventan chant, fields in which she specializes in the study and transcription of ancient manuscripts.

Born in Florence, she graduated in Piano in 2001 and in Organ and Organ Composition in 2009 under the guidance of Alessandro Albenga. After completing her studies in Italy, she moved to the Netherlands, where she obtained Bachelor (BMUS) and Master (MMUS) degrees in Organ at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam with Pieter van Dijk, specializing in performance on historical instruments. She completed her Dutch studies with a performance on the famous Christian Müller organ (1738) of Sint Bavo Kerk in Haarlem. In 2017 she obtained a second-level degree in Choral Conducting with Fabio Lombardo, conducting Liszt’s Via Crucis in a concert-exam in which, in addition to conducting, she also directed staged elements based on historical-interpretative research presented in her thesis, offering new hypotheses on the harmonic and compositional style of late Liszt.

Her concert career has brought her to perform regularly in major theatres and international festivals in Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, France, Poland, Argentina, Uruguay, and the United States. She has participated in prestigious festivals such as the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Roma Festival Barocco, Festival Internacional de Órgano del Uruguay, and the Sweelinck International Organ Festival. “Es aquí (Bach) donde se agiganta el arte interpretativo de Giovanna Riboli (…) amén de su excelente técnica organística (…)” [“It is here (with Bach) that Giovanna Riboli’s interpretative artistry grows (…) together with her excellent organ technique (…)”], wrote René Vargas Vera in La Nación (Buenos Aires).

In 2018 she won a grant within the European Year of Cultural Heritage, promoted by the Italian Ministry of Culture, with the project “Diversity and Intercultural Dialogue in Musical Tradition,” dedicated to studying and disseminating both European and extra-European musical heritage, with a special focus on Georgian vocal tradition.

Over the years, Giovanna has recorded numerous CDs for prestigious labels such as Tactus and Brilliant Classics. Among them, her album The Organ of the Badia Fiorentina received four-star reviews from BBC Music Magazine and Organists’ Review (“There is plenty of virtuosic playing on this CD, and in this programme there is a great deal to enjoy”), and was featured by Rete Toscana Classica and Rainews24 as CD of the Month. Her research has also contributed to a scholarly volume on the Badia Fiorentina, with a study of the 1558 Zeffirini organ. A study on the illuminated manuscripts of the Badia Fiorentina is currently being published, with a first article in the Proceedings of the Medieval Studies Conference NUME (2023).

“Her conscious understanding of the theological and mystagogical meaning of music within liturgy, developed over years in monasteries where prayers are sung as a liturgy of medieval monodic chants with Byzantine influences, makes her interpretations not a simple accompaniment to the Word, but its continuation,” wrote Fr. Carlo Turri Zanoni, Prior of the Badia Fiorentina.

In addition to her concert career, she has served as assistant organist at several of Amsterdam’s main churches, such as the Oude Kerk, Nieuwe Kerk, and Duif Kerk, and was part of the organizational committee of the Sweelinck International Organ Festival. She also served as organist of the Catedral Anglicana San Juan Bautista in Buenos Aires (Argentina). She has been choir director and director of music for the Church of England at St. Mark’s English Church in Florence, where she also organized concerts and musical projects.

In 2023 she was organ lecturer and speaker at the University of St Andrews Summer Course in Scotland, addressing topics related to organ performance and historical research. “The invitation is as a consequence of Prof. Riboli’s internationally recognised expertise in the field of organ performance and related research, her recording activities, and her position as curator of the 16th-century Zeffirini organ at the Badia Fiorentina in Florence.”

In 2025 she was a guest at the University of Cambridge, where she gave a masterclass on organ performance and a concert at Trinity College.

She has collaborated with the University of Florence – Faculty of Law for the course “Law and Music.”

She is Professor of Organ and Gregorian Chant at the Conservatory of Benevento, where she also teaches Beneventan Chant and directs a choir specializing in the performance of ancient liturgical repertoire (7th–11th centuries).

In November 2024, she carried out a U.S. tour as conductor of the choir she founded and trained in the performance of Beneventan Chant, a liturgical chant of the 7th–11th centuries preceding Gregorian chant. The performance project, entitled Spiritus Dei ferebatur, traces the history of Christianity through the martyrdom of the early Christians. For this project, she selected and transcribed a number of pieces (from neumatic notation from original manuscripts). With her choir, she performed at Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral, at Adelphi University (where she also gave a lecture on chironomic conducting), and at the Italian Cultural Institute (where she also presented a lecture on the theological-mystagogical meaning of the project), concluding the tour with a concert at Carnegie Hall, New York, which received enthusiastic acclaim from both audience and critics.

She is co-founder and artistic director of Mesotonica, a cultural and musical association promoting early music in Prato, with over 400 concerts of early, sacred, and secular music organized, and artistic director of the International Early Music Festival PratoAntiqua.

Since 2015, she has been principal organist of the 1558 Zeffirini da Cortona organ in meantone temperament at the Badia Fiorentina, the oldest monastery in Florence, mentioned by Dante Alighieri in Canto XVI of the Divine Comedy, and the place where Giovanni Boccaccio in 1373 gave the first Lectura Dantis, which bestowed on Dante’s Commedia the epithet “divine.”