Italian guitarist and composer Francesco Lo Castro released his forth studio album in October 2013. Entitled Chasing Beauty, the album has a European and cinematic jazz quality to it that sits halfway between the works of authors such as Pat Metheny and Ennio Morricone. Each piece is a canvas of images and colors dictated by the writing and arranging style of the author and by the careful choices of instrumentation and collaborators employed, including Fulvio Sigurtà on trumpet, Joe Fowler on flute, Dora Maria on violin, Maurizio Minardi on accordion, Noa Bodner on harmonica and vocals, Sophie Alloway and Saverio Gerardi on drums, Dado Pasqualini on percussions, and Sveta Savvina on double-bass.
Lo Castro studied Music Performance at Thames Valley University, London. He also won the “Best Guitarist Award” at the Guitar Institute, London. Based in London since 2000, Lo Castro has toured worldwide, performing as leader or with an array of artists including Us3, Jim Mullen, multi-platinum recording artist Patrizio Buanne, and two-time Grammy award winner Eric DeFade.
Explaining the thought process behind the album, Lo Castro says: Beauty is about imperfections....uniqueness as individual and personal as the characters that chase it. It is about humanity and the humans' incapacity to control and perfect everything. Beauty is little unnoticed mistakes that make a music performance real, felt, and in the moment. Music, for me, has always had a close connection with the images a person, a feeling or a situation, has embedded in my memory. This is what I described in this album. Beauty is an idea, a feeling that we might never fully understand, but which is worth chasing."