Dario Salvi was born in Brescia, Northern Italy, in September 1975. From a very young age he displayed a great interest in music and it was not long before he started studying soprano saxophone with the Philarmonica S.Cecilia in his home-town of Sarezzo. After years of studying performance and music theory as a teenager he soon became an in-demand saxophonist and alto clarinet player and worked with many bands and big-bands, for which he also acted as arranger. It was at this time that his passion for the bass guitar started to come afloat, however he was too busy playing the sax to have enough time to dedicate to the bass.
He then joined the army and became Deputy Bandmaster of the Tridentina Regimental Band of The Alpine Troops, of which he remained an active member until 2011. During 1997 and 1998 he received formal training as Bandmaster and started studying the art of conducting and music theory, as well as learning about the military music tradition. The band’s members are German and Italian-speaking musicians based in South Tyrol, a former part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was there that he was first exposed extensively to Austrian music and it is then that he started to fall in love with it. After having studied jazz harmony and modern music theory and becoming a professional bass player, he started touring Europe and the USA with several international artists.
He has played at large festivals in the Netherlands, Serbia and Slovenia, as well as in clubs and discos all over Italy, Austria and Switzerland. He started conducting bands in Italy in 2006 and has never looked back. He was Musical Director for Banda San Gottardo di Barghe for five years, Musical Director of Corpo Musicale di Vestone for two years and a music teacher for Corpo Musicale di Serle for one year, as well as Co-Conductor of Banda Choros, a professional concert band composed of some of the best players and conductors from bands based in the Province of Brescia in Northern Italy. After graduating with Honours in Applied Psychology from the University of Derby on a distance learning course, he moved to England in 2011 to read for a Masters Degree in Conducting. During this time he worked with Chamber Orchestra Anglia and the University of East Anglia Symphony Orchestra. He assisted Sharon Choa, Conductor of UEASO for almost three years. During this time he also worked as Arranger for the Chamber Orchestra Anglia, arranging music for the orchestra as well as septets or different ensembles within the orchestra. Soon after graduating with a MMus he founded the Imperial Vienna Orchestra, composed of some of the best musicians in the East of England. He has made the orchestra a very successful musical enterprise and is proud to bring a new approach to classical music to the UK.
As a member of the Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain he has been very active in arranging new music from the Viennese Archives for orchestras, quartets and military bands. In 2015 he was awarded Honorary Life Membership by the Society.
With the Imperial Vienna Orchestra, Salvi mainly performs his arrangements of Viennese Music, some of which are not available to the general public in recorded form. This makes every concert a rare occasion to listen to these works that have such. With IVO he has been able to work on other pieces that are not traditionally associated with Viennese music, including works by Schubert, Schumann and Busoni, as well as composers from other geographical areas like Grieg, Verdi, Offenbach, Ketelbey, Coates and Mendelssohn. Salvi has a keen eye on Viennese Operetta and is bringing premiere performances of works by Genée, Suppé, Millöcher, Fahrbach and Johann Strauss II to the UK.
Currently he is busy working in collaboration with the Johann Strauss Society of Great Britain and the University of Wisconsin (USA) on a performance of Suppé’s 1883 operetta ‘A Trip To Africa’ (Die Afrikareise). His work includes arranging the parts and scores and supplying a translation of the original German text into English when the text has been lost from the last performance literature, which was in an early 20th Century American production. In addition to this he is using the original promptbooks and dialogue in order to supply a complete work to Opera Houses all over the world. His next works as a researcher and scholar include for 2017 Richard Genèe – Der Seekadett (The Royal Middy), Franz von Suppè – Mozart (Play with music), Giacomo Meyerbeer – Romilda and Costanza, Richard Genèe – Freund Felix and much more.