The Calamus clarinet ensemble is made up of Sicilian musicians from the Vincenzo Bellini Conservatory of Catania. Its artistic director is Carmelo Dell’Acqua.

The members of the group have attended training course and masterclasses (Stoltzman, Pay, Leister, De Peyer, Marriner, Carbonare, Meloni, Palermo) and they take part to other chamber ensembles and they won a lot of national and international music competitions.

The ensemble took part to different musical overviews and musical productions in many Italian cities, including: Ferrara, Siena, Florence, Lucca, Bologna, Rome, Salerno, Messina, Trapani, Agrigento, Ragusa, Noto, Syracuse, Palermo.

He also performed at the VI European Clarinet Festival in Camerino (Macerata, Italy), at the Internationales Jugend Musik Festival in the castles of Heldburg and Tambach in the Rodachtal in Germany, at the Het Swik Festival at the Kielzog Theater Kunstencentrum of Hoogezand-Sappemeer in the Netherlands, at the Internationales ClarinetFest in Oostende in Belgium, at the Gran Canaria International Clarinet Festival at the Teatro de Culturas in Arinaga and at the XI European Clarinet Congress at the Academy of Music Krzysztof Penderecki in Krakow, Poland.

More than twenty compositions have been dedicated to the Calamus ensemble.

In 2005 it has played Company of Philipe Glass in its new version for clarinets, composed by Thomas Lawrence Toscano: the composition was played for the first time during a meeting with the famous American composer. In 2008 it took part to the production of the music soundtrack, composed by Paolo Buonvino, for the tv series “Il commissario Manara”, produced by Rai 2.

The ensemble collaborated with: Paolo Beltramini, Antonio Capolupo, Alessandro Carbonare, Paolo De Gaspari, Corrado Giuffredi, Michele Marelli, Andrew Marriner, Fabrizio Meloni, Gabriele Mirabassi, Vincenzo Paci, Giovanni Punzi, Kevin Spagnolo, Capriccio Clarinet Orchestra (NL).

Some exhibitions of the clarinet ensemble were transmitted by: Rai International, Rai 3, Filodiffusione Nazionale, Radio Vaticana, Mittel Deutscher Rundfunk.

The repertoire, made up by original compositions and transcriptions, goes from middle-age compositions to contemporary music, going through traditional and jazz music. The transcriptions are realized by Marco Monitto and published by MDS-Edition, Ebensee (Austria) and by SMP Press Emeryville, (California).

In 2015 the ensemble represented Istituto Superiore di Studi Musicali “Vincenzo Bellini” of Catania during the EXPO in Milan.

The ensemble made some records for Suvini-Zerboni, City Record, RaiTrade.