First guitar and accompaniment at the same time

Guitar Player Nico Di Battista, who performed last night at Piazza Park bar, and will be also putting a show in late afternoon at Shkodra’s Piazza street, has a self-made guitar equipped with an in-built recorder to enable him to have multiple roles while playing.

He would, say, play the accompaniment accord when starting playing a tune, which the guitar records, and it feeds it to the boom box itself afterwards, while di Battista engages in playing first guitar.

Di Battista is active in northern Italian scene, but he would also play music when, say, LA-based gospel singer Solomon Burke (of the “Everybody needs somebody” fame) comes to Europe, and hires European musicians to play for him.

Di Battista seems to be the first to have invented such a guitar, says Florian Jakaj, who is organizing Shkodra Jazz Fest, and is friends with him. Others have imitated such a technique afterwards.

Di Battista, and Venice-based violinist Sokol Prekalori will play at Piazza the tunes of the Dream Trio, including a violin version of Piazzolla’s Libertango.