Q.Roby Vitari has just been nominated Director of GM Drum School, USA. The Italian school has 7 locations in Italy with a particular philosophy as compared to traditional music school, right? Can you explain it to the American public?
A.
The GM Drum School philosophy is based above all on the passion for drums and for music in general. It puts the personal ego aside in favor of collaboration and intended language as a communication tool between musicians. Aggregation for the purposes of artistic creation.
Q.
Tell us about Roby Vitari musician and Roby teacher, what's the difference?
A.
Actually there is not much difference between the two figures …. Both are governed by the unstoppable desire to express themselves and communicate. The teacher is in turn a student because he teaches and learns constantly from everyone.
Every little input (also given by an 8-year-old kid who approaches the drums) is an invaluable starting point for discovering and embarking on new paths and knowledge. The musician, in turn, is continually stimulated by the outside world that inevitably affects growth and personality. .
Q.
What do you think is the most important thing for a teacher?
A.
Understanding the psychology and sensitivity of the student and adapting to it, to be able to transfer their experience and knowledge in the lightest and most amusing way possible … music should not be considered as an obligation nor a job in the worst sense of the term but fun.
Q.
And for a musician?
A.
Communication. Never live in individuality. I have always considered myself a "rhythmic" and not "soloist" drummer, in need of others. I have always needed energy, warmth and contact with other artists in order to create and express myself as a musician.
Q.
What are your plans for the future of GM USA?
A.
There is currently an upgrade to the California Headquarter, we are moving into a new, wider, beautiful location in Downtown Santa Ana at the new premises of the famous LockOut Music Studios present in many Southern California cities. The future is always Evolving!
Q.
Any thanks that includes sponsors and endorsements
A.
thanks to Gigi Morello and the staff of the International headquarter (Italy) for their support and for believing in me as well as my current, very precious sponsors: UFIP Cymbals and the wonderful Tronci family, Bode Music Gear for Evans Drumheads and Collision Drumsticks .

Extracted from the 2014 GM Art School Essay. Thank you Dada and Luigi of "Friends of the Remo" for the beautiful location, the GM Directive, the GM Teachers and all the students who participated and the more than 250 spectators who attended.

Agostino Romeo, an Italian-born Swiss drummer, Agodrummer called himself on Facebook, left us on September 28, 2012.
We knew him because he was eternally present in the bacterial community with his videos, his comments on videos of other drummers.
He was there.
And he's still there, even though an incurable disease has taken away his body.
We remember the positivity and joviality, always in a joking tone replicated and commented in the bacterial field until a few days before the event that, unfortunately, unites all the exponents of the human race, together with birth.
We asked his wife Franca Monti to be able to tell the story of Agodrummer, and she agreed, though destroyed by grief, to tell the life of Ago as a Musician and as a man, two months after his departure.
Thank you Franca and thank you Augustine for crossing your life with ours.
Gigi Morello
 
 
AGOSTINO ROMEO was born in Trapani on 9/12.1950, a period when Europe emerged from the darkness of the Second World War.
In these years different musical styles are imposed, very popular in America and landed in Europe thanks to some soldiers from across the Ocean stationed in Italy, France, Germany. Many Italian musicians were trained by listening, observing and repeating what they heard and saw by those who had their fate found themselves serving in Europe.
Augustine was among those who seized the stimulus and ideas of this first experience. Then came the Beatles with their innovative, sweet and scratchy sound at the same time. Augustine, thanks to his father Mario, who, given his passion, signed promissory note to be able to offer his son the instrument of the heart, already at fourteen years old is among those who animate the evenings of Trapani, Wounded but fair city, on whose summer nights the sound of a clarinet , of a saxophone battery, silence the pain of a people: there is a strong desire for freedom and the future is not far away.
Augustine chose the drums, like many of his peers, but his talent allows him to run and overcome the difficulties that each instrument entails. At first as a self-taught, he later understood the need to learn from a master, but the talent and opportunities are such that in a short time he sails to Africa, the countries of Northern Europe, he knows the whole of the Old Continent working, or rather, playing and creating, with and for numerous ensembles with which he bastes the canvas of his musical grammar.The battery, it was said: this instrument enters the cultural fabric, into the living flesh of Augustine, so much so that his dedication to this magnificent instrument will become, at times, almost an obsession. His "bulimia" of knowledge for the music of the second half of the twentieth century, especially popular (pop, jazz, funk, rock, jazz-rock, salsa, latin, etc.), are increasingly the sound vocabulary through which Augustine expresses if himself and his worldview. A sunny and sociable soul, Augustine has always put friendship and the sharing of knowledge before the ego, creating around him an atmosphere of sincere curiosity for everything "scented" of music and sound. In this sense it is possible to find in some of the many students, that spirit of openness and research that have marked its musical journey.
 
Augustine has always spent words of encouragement for the young musicians who were lucky enough to meet him and gather his suggestions.
Until the last days of his life, his narrative, his life, were punctuated by the precise and never trivial rhythm of his thinking. Even those who saw him in the last moments of his life, he was able to share a free spirit and still fascinated by the drums, so much so that, although weak and sore, a week before he died, he still sat behind his magnificent instrument with which went through the best years of his life.
We thank Augustine for the human warmth and for the many moments he has given us in this strange world.
Franca Monti
Wife, Fan, Friend

A man, a drummer, a musician like many, like none.
Ivan Gheller still leaves us at a young age, less than 60 years old, because of an incurable disease.
Ivan left this body last Saturday, June 2, 2012, in his Venaria Reale, the first suburb of Turin.
Discreetly he goes away, almost muted, mute as he used to get to the events of the drummers he often frequented. Two words at the end to comment on a fill, a groove, the sympathy or behavior of the musician in question, and then fall back into his life.
An educated drummer, a lover of good rhythm in rock and pop music, loved to interpret the songs of Vasco and other Italian artists, after playing prog for several years and "getting tired".
For those who knew him better than I did, my drummer friends Tony Ricciardi and Max Gordiani, Ivan was an eclectic character, particular, not without a certain English humor.
I also met him in another capacity, the counterpart of the artist not properly "professional" (only for the fact that he had another source of income) that also in his work inserts that dowry inserted into his soul even in the profession that gives him bread.

Ivan was an excellent decorator and after decorating Tony's little room in GM and after suggesting it in decorating my fiancée's house was naturally noticed and also decorated the house of my girlfriend's sister and then mom…. He was good, he wasn't a painter, with nothing to take away from the painters. He worked with his brother Gianfranco, who I met briefly at the funeral, destroyed by grief.
Art has different facets but each of them has to do with doing something by putting love and passion into it.
Ivan was an artist.
They waited for him in July to do some more work in their homes in need of art and love. Which house isn't?
They too were shocked by the bad news. A drummer-decorator, a man who with his art left a mark in the hearts of the people who crossed him.
Discreet, yes, it was hard even to find out where he had ended up, tracking down on the internet the contact of his brother who sent Tony back to the hospital where Ivan was in hospital. Ivan hadn't told anyone he had a few months to live. He was no longer answering his phone.
Even with us who magically paraded in front of his uninvited deathbed he says he has "an infection" and we patiently pretend to believe it, a dumb agreement of people who do not want to violate his desire to maintain a demeanour and not be made crying On. More than understandable but not easy to do. Not everyone can.
"He should vent and cry, it would be good for him" says the nurse in charge of Ivan with whom we talk, maybe yes, but the fact of living his illness without complaining and without seeking compassion does not now seem a stupid choice, but a choice that few brave people succeed to undertake.
"When you're sick you really realize how much some things really don't matter," he tells me when he sees me with his arm broken, I agree, i've never agreed more on something before.
For Max Gordiani who several times since that day goes to visit him are discussions about music, listening to more or less portentous drummers and engaging music, never a nod to his incurable evil that insists.
Then the news.
At the funeral Brother Gianfranco, family and friends and the two daughters that Ivan leaves. A group of alpine conscripts in uniform and with banners present us with another aspect that we did not know about Ivan. Before tumuular is asked if anyone wants to say something. We wonder if anyone had put chopsticks in his coffin, "because Ivan was a drummer." Max lends his and adds a stick that is promptly secured along with the same on the lid of the coffin, above the brass cross. Max is the person who was closest to Ivan at the end.
Strange to see someone leaving this world.
It's more than natural, sooner or later it's everyone's turn but for some strange reason we can't get used to it.
Perhaps because our immortal soul refuses to say that when your body ceases to be able to move and breathe everything is over.
Maybe because it's not true.
Have a good trip Ivan.
G – friends of the Drum School

Tributes

TONY RICCIARDI
I will always remember with pleasure and affection our musical evenings based on the study of drums, the many seminars seen together, the Turin MARATHON, all the bacterial events organized by Gm Drum School and your concerts covers by Vasco Rossi. Keep laughing at what made you laugh, those little things and the pleasant cheerful evenings they spent together. Hello Ivan you will continue to live in the hearts of those who loved you. Rest in peace.
Tony Ricciardi

GORDIAN MAX
I remember, a lot of pearls of wisdom, I also remember a lot of concert stories, I think he also played shoulder to the Genesis, of Ivan there are many things that will be missing, surely he was a kind of company, as well as a great musician, I remember always saying that if never had something bad happened would have had pleasure up there jammare with buddy rich, and was curious more than scared…
He held on to the end I know because until the day before I went to see him in the hospital.
A few years ago, for me he did this, on a random day when things just didn't go and I felt destroyed, I met him out there "hello how's it going? I'm going to see Vasco at the stadium, come I'll pay the ticket too!" He insisted how important it was to go and see the concerts, telling me: "Study study but come and see what you have to do and only here in front of the stage you will see it… if you want to make a career it's important." Well, it brought me luck because a short time later I said to myself to do and I found myself face to face with the beauty of 11,000 people.
He was a fan of Virgil Donati and Planet x.
I still remember when he placed the double pedal on the ahahah nomads, and he was strong.
He played with a lot of bands, even recorded metal never disdaining funky and fusion in general.
He will miss me and his family a lot. I sincerely hope that you do not miss the traces of his heart playing …."…"you have to sweat you have to sweat" he told me "only with dedication you will get to do something right". He was a great indeed he is a great! And he knew how to do groove.
Max Gordiani

DAVID, C.
I don't know Ivan Gheller much, but I would like to write a thought to remember him.
When I was about 18, I went to the rehearsal room and saw them for the first time. I was astounded by the precision and power he had in playing and every time I saw him I would stop and watch him trying to "steal" something.
By chance one day at a clinic of Ian Paice (in 2008 in Collegno if I'm not mistaken) I met him and exchanged thoughts about what we had just heard and seen done by the mythical Ian.
The thing that struck me about Ivan was his humility in talking about one of the greatest drummers in history and I think it's hard to find good drummers who don't "put their heads up."
I asked him if maybe when he was in the rehearsal room I could come in and watch him and listen to him closely, his answer was: but we would miss a couple of chopsticks that we have fun and play a little together…
I was happily impressed, because from a person who has known each other for a few minutes you do not always expect such a welcome…
Unfortunately for various commitments I stopped playing and that was the last time I saw Ivan Gheller.
About a year ago I started playing again and tried to get in touch with him in various ways but without being successful, I wanted him to give me drum lessons I saw in him a perfect master…
Yesterday, 11/9/2013 after several attempts I learn of her disappearance…
We weren't friends, certainly if I met him maybe he wouldn't remember me, but the news of his passing struck me.
Reading other dediches I had the confirmation of my feelings, as well as a great drummer was a great person and you could see that he loved music deeply…
I wanted to express my thoughts…. I carry with me that small but pleasant memory I have of him…
David

IF you want to write A SALUTO or A TRIBUTE ON IVAN, OR MANDARE OF YOUR PHOTO WITH YOU, SENT THE ALL to INFO@GMDRUMSCHOOL.COM AND THE ALL OUTERED ON THIS PAGE.