Was born in 1960; his parents were musicians too and his father has been his first teacher initiating him to the study of guitar when Stefano was just twelve years old. Previously Stefano had already had experiences with Accordion and Piano.
The encounter with the “six strings” is shining and takes him, at the age of eighteen, to the Diploma at the Academy of Music with full marks and honours.
After the Diploma he has studied for four years in Milan with Ruggero Chiesa and takes part, as an active student, to the specialization courses hold by Oscar Ghiglia in Gargnano and at the Chigiana Academy of Music in Siena, and by Josè Tomàs and Magnus Anderson for contemporary music. He has a very busy concert activity in Italy and abroad as a soloist and in chamber groups among which the “Italian Guitar Consort”. With this group Stefano Viola has recorded a CD with the participation of the soprano Lorna Windsor.
He has been the winner in famous national and international competitions (Trieste, “Nicola Fago in Taranto, “Fernando Sor” in Rome, “ Città di Alessandria”, “Mauro Giuliani” in Bari). Moreover he was a finalist in the international competition “Andres Segovia” in Palma de Majorca.
Even his didactic activity was very strenuous and precocious and brought him to teach in the Conservatory of Music in Venice, Trieste, Rovigo, Perugia, Modena, Bologna, Bari, Castelfranco Veneto (TV), Udine where today he is the holder of a chair for guitar.
Stefano Viola is also a teacher at the prestigious Guitar Academy ”Francisco Tarrega” in Pordenone: this school is famous and recognized all over Europe and boasts students coming from every part of Italy, Slovenia, Spain, Poland, Ukrainia, Mexico, Hungary.
The students from his school who have given and passed the exams for the Diploma in the State Academies of Music are most numerous, and even those who have a regular concerts activity and win the most important national and international competitions (“Sor”in Rome, “Città di Alessandria”, Almeria, “Tàrrega” in Benicasim, ecc.)
For years he has been busy in a continuous widening of all the technical and mechanical aspects dealing with the relation with the instrument; thanks to these researches Stefano Viola has been invited to deliver lectures and Master-Class in several Guitar Festivals.
He has published for the Sinfonica Musical Editions (Carish distribution) two volumes dealing with the Techniques of Guitar (Scales and Ligatures). Besides Stefano Viola has revised with Paolo Pegoraro two collections of studies by Sor and Giuliani published by the same publishing house.