IVAN BERTOLLA

Artist's Website
Contact Artist
Victoria, Australia

Warranties and Disclaimers

"Imagine cinematic, 'Mortal Kombat' imagery , progressive instrumental music with adventurous electric guitar, orchestras, aggressive choir, opera singers, church organs, Western And Eastern chants with a focus on thematic compositions," is the quote from an Australian music editor about Ivan Bertolla's CD Beyond The Skies Eternity. Targeting his music towards action films, progressive music fans, and guitar lovers, Bertolla offers seventeen unique compositions heavily laden with wickedly fast keyboards and guitar synth (think Vitalij Kuprij crossed with a guitar-playing Jens Johansson), rhythmic crunch, sampled choirs, and Pentium-speed guitar runs, which are inserted at carefully chosen places in the compositions for maximum impact. When the guitar does appear, it is ultra-heavy and designed to stun. Quite an ambitious set of instrumentals offered here by Bertolla - this is taking the genre into a creative new direction" - Guitar Nine Records

"Melbourne guitarist Ivan Bertolla is a Latrobe University composition graduate, and some of his current projects include the 'Macleod GUitar School' and production company 'Mastermind Productions'.  'Beyond the Skies Eternity' essentially showcases Ivan as guitarist/composer within a collection of seventeen tracks that he personally describes as, "a slowly evolving CD which started out as a metal work and turned into an orchestral metal work."  'Gothic Castle' opens the show with choral/orchestral stabs and countless sixteenth-note (sometimes at incredible speed) flourishes that seem to infiltrate the sonic space from every direction, while the following track 'Cathedral' is in-your-face, pseudo classical, super charged jazz-rock techno.  This album is over the top with no apologies being made, and makes one thing perfectly clear... 'Ivan can play the guitar'." - Australian Music Magazine

"This is a XXX, dramatical, instrumental, progressive masterpiece with virtuoso guitar- and keyboard performance. Malmsteen, throw yourself into a wall! There are more thoughts behind the music and the compositions, not just guitar aerobics. If you're a metal freak and like fantasy books and/or movies, you certainly have to get this album! It should work as soundtrack to any great movie with it's dramatic variation of sampled choirs, orchestras, arabic inspired melodies and first and foremost wonderful aggressive progressive metal. The album has 17 tracks but are only 40 min long. But who the hell told that length matters? It's the speed... or?!

The Australian and multi-instrumentalist Ivan Bertolla plays all instruments except drums, and some piano parts. He has a musical degree and background, with university studies and has collected a great part of inspiration from the old masters as Mozart, Bach , Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Monteverdi. Ivan has also started his own guitar school: Macleod Guitar School in Melbourne, where he since a couple of years is an acknowledged guitar pedagogic." - Mikel Bennerhed, Swedish Rock Magazine