Ennio Nicotra was born in Palermo. In ‘89, after completing his studies in pianoforte, he travelled to St. Petersburg to study conducting with Ilya Musin in whose school were taught many well-known conductors including Yury Temirkanov, Valery Gergiev, Semyon Bychcov, Rudolf Barshai,Vassilij Sinaisky.
Under Musin’s tutelage he aquired a solid technique and a vast operatic and symphonic repertoire, and in a short time he was invited to conduct some of the most important Russian Orchestras, including, in St. Petersburg, the Philarmonic and the Radio and Television Orchestra. Also the Moldovian Philarmonic (Kiscinov) and Orchestras in Kislovodsk, Essentukj, Ulianovsk, Ekaterinburg, Riga, among others. He has collaborated with such esteemed performers as Bruno Canino, Misha Maisky, Paul Badura-Skoda, Carlo Bergonzi. Between ‘94-’96 he taught as assistant to Musin during the Siena Masterclasses at the Accademia Chigiana, and following the death of his mentor at the renowned summer Giornate Musicali in Assisi.Since 2001 he leads courses in Perugia, which are visited by young students from all over Italy, Europe,  South America, Australia, New Zealand, USA, Russia. Among them are also conservatory teachers and musicians from well known Italian orchestras like "Santa Cecilia" and "Orchestra Sinfonica Siciliana"; as well as from European orchestras like "Bayerischen Rundfunks", "Concertgebouw Amsterdam", "London Symphony Orchestra". In 2002 he founded the "Ilya Musin Society", aiming to diffuse Musin's system in the world. From that year on he teaches international seminars in Saint Petersburg at the "Peter the Great" academy in cooperation with the "Saint Petersburg State Academic Symphony Orchestra" and the "Union of Composers". He has given a demonstration of his method in the documentary movie "Play" programmed by "SKY Classical". His method is being studied by the "Università degli studi di Palermo. He is the author of the DVD "Introduction to the Orchestral Conducting Technique" with the contribution of the piano duo Bruno Canino - Antonio Ballista  distributed worl-wide by Edizioni Curci Milano.Now, in Italy, this  the best seller book about orchestral conducting. Available in german, italian, english, spanish  www.edizionicurci.it/printed-music/scheda.asp?id=2873 

From: "Classical Music Magazine" 3 february 2007

"Waving, not drowning"

by Andrew Stewart

"(...) Ennio Nicotra has a very precise answer - as rational as it can be - to each technical problem (...); (...) now we know that there is a ground on which we can start building (...)".
Bruno Canino
 

“Ennio Nicotra is not only a refined and sensitive conductor, with perfect technique, but also an extraordinary teacher. The fact that he studied with and later assisted the legendary Ilya Musin says everything about his capabilities”.
Paul Badura-Skoda


"Everybody knows that music is also gesture. It is also easily understandable that an appropriate performance of an orchestra must proceed from well-chosen gestures. But, since in conductorship there is seemingly no material connection between the gesture of the director and the production of the sound, it can happen that the director, not apt to communicate the most appropriate gesture to obtain the desired sound, has to resort to verbal indications. This makes things more difficult for the orchestral players, who are compelled to expunge and even to go against the gestures of the director in order to obtain the result he wanted to achieve. This causes loss of time during the rehearsals, and a surplus of physical and mental effort for the musicians. Ilya Musin , probably the greatest teacher of conductorship ever, has analyzed with definitive results the fundamentals of the connection between the gesture of the director and the production of sound from the orchestrals.
Ennio Nicotra can be considered his evangelist, nay something more : not only has he assimilated Musin ' s teaching , he has also, thanks to a great vocation for didactics , rationalized it better than anyone else among Musin ' s students.
Nicotra' s lessons are useful to career directors who are disposed to bring their convictions into question , to aspiring directors, to orchestral players wishful for verifications in their profession. , to musicians in general and to melomaniacs eager to understand the secrets of this difficult art".
Antonio Ballista



"Thanks to Musin's thought and Nicotra's passionate teaching, the so called mistery of the art of conducting -which has led to many mystifications in the past- is now transformed in a rationally researchable subject, objectively transmittable through plain didactics".
Carlo Goldstein