Doc Rossi is a citternist, composer and scholar born in Dayton, Ohio in 1955, emigrating to Europe in 1984. Today, He Lives In Corsica. He studied music from an early age and began performing at 14. He has B.A.s in Music and English Literature, and was awarded the Ph.D. in 1991 from the University of London, where he wrote on Shakespeare and Brecht under the supervision of René Weis and Keith Walker. He studied guitar with Andrea Damiani and has had tuition from John Renbourn, Ugo Orlandi, Richard Strasser, Christopher Morrongiello, Ljubo Majstorovic and John Anthony Lennon.
Rossi has had a life-long interest in the cittern, having built one at the age of 13. He now performs on a variety of instruments, including the diatonic Renaissance cittern, the modern Irish cittern, and especially the so-called English guitar or Cetra, an 18th-century instrument. He also plays guitar, bass guitar, tenor banjo, mandolin and mandola.
His recordings include Six Sonatas for Cetra or Kitara by Pasqualini Demarzi with Andrea Damiani, and La Cetra Galant, a CD of solos and duets. His publications include The Compleat Cittern, a tutor for 18th-century cittern (with transcriptions for guitar and other 6-course instruments), the English translation of Andrea Damiani’s Tutor for Renaissance Lute, a modern edition of Thomas Robinson’s cittern music including New Citharen Lessons (1609) and pieces from manuscript sources, and The Original Guitar Styles of Jerry Donahue. He has published articles dealing with guitar and cittern history, Shakespeare and Brecht, Scott Fitzgerald, and the Beat Generation.
He is a founder, with Joseph Schultz, of Cetra Publishing, which specializes in music for the cittern.
In 2005 and 2007 he was giving lectures on playing techniqes at the 2nd and 3rd Waldzither-conference at Suhl in Thuringia, Germany, where he was invited as a specialist to revive the German cittern.