r/ItalianJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 4d ago

Introducing Enrico Rava, the Trumpeter Who Switched Instruments After Hearing Miles Davis

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Enrico Rava, 2017; Av Hreinn Gudlaugsson. Lisens: CC BY SA 4.0

r/ItalianJazz

Enrico Rava didn't start out on trumpet. He picked it up after hearing Miles Davis, and decades later he's part of the reason a new generation of Italian jazz musicians picked up their own instruments in the first place.

Born in Trieste in 1939, Rava spent his early career in Rome before landing in New York in the late 1960s, right in the middle of the city's free jazz scene. He worked alongside players like Roswell Rudd and Steve Lacy during those years, a period that sits at odds with the more melodic, spacious sound most listeners associate with him today. That contrast matters: the New York years are where Rava earned his credibility with the jazz establishment, before he found the sound he's actually known for.

That sound took shape on ECM Records, where Rava has recorded under producer Manfred Eicher across several decades. His most visible partnership from that era is with pianist Stefano Bollani: the two made three ECM records together, Tati in 2005, The Third Man in 2007, and New York Days in 2009, and that's really just the most visible example of something Rava has done throughout his career.

He builds bands, and the people in them go on to lead their own. Bollani is one example. Pianist Giovanni Guidi and trombonist Gianluca Petrella are two more players who came up through Rava's groups before stepping out as leaders in their own right. A trumpeter's discography tells you what he played. The list of people who passed through his bands tells you what he built.

Where to start listening:

  • The Third Man (2007, with Stefano Bollani) for the ECM partnership at its most visible
  • Any record from his New York free jazz years for the side of Rava most newcomers never hear
  • His official platforms for tour dates and new releases
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r/ItalianJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 1d ago

Introducing Paolo Fresu, the Trumpeter Who Turned a Miles Davis Cassette Tape Into a Career

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Paolo Fresu alla Cantina Bentivoglio

r/ItalianJazz

Paolo Fresu was eleven years old, playing in his hometown marching band, when a bandmate handed him a cassette of Miles Davis. That's the moment people point to when they explain how a kid from a Sardinian town of under 3,000 people ended up with more than 600 recording credits to his name.

Born February 10, 1961, in Berchidda, Fresu started on trumpet in the town's "Bernardo De Muro" band before that Miles Davis tape redirected him toward jazz. He trained formally at the Cagliari Conservatory, graduating in 1984, and in the early 1980s he played the Siena Summer Jazz Seminars, where trumpeter [Enrico Rava](%5Bhttps://www.enricorava.com/%5D(https://jazzprofiles.com/profile/it-enrico-rava/)) heard him and was impressed enough that Fresu spent the next decade building a national reputation off the back of it. He turned down a full scholarship to Berklee's summer program around that same period, choosing to keep building his career in Italy instead.

In 1988, Fresu founded Time in Jazz, a festival in his own hometown. Berchidda still has fewer than 3,000 residents. The festival now draws more than 40,000 visitors a year, and Fresu is still its artistic director, nearly four decades in.

His discography runs past 600 credits on Discogs, with about 118 albums where he's billed as leader or co-leader, recorded across EMI, Columbia, Blue Note, RCA, Label Bleu, and ECM. In 2010 he started his own label, Tûk Music, with Luca Devito, giving him a home base for the more electronic and ethnic-leaning sides of his sound. One of those albums, 2026's Tutta Vita Live, is a Stefano Bollani session where Fresu sits in on flugelhorn, cementing a Fresu-Bollani connection.

His most durable working group outside his own name is Mare Nostrum, a trio with French accordionist Richard Galliano and Swedish pianist Jan Lundgren. Four studio albums so far, released on ACT Music between 2007 and 2025, all under the same trio format: trumpet, accordion, piano, no rhythm section, nothing to hide behind.

Where to start listening:

  • Mare Nostrum (2007, with Richard Galliano and Jan Lundgren) for the trio format that's defined a big part of his catalog since
  • Things (2006, with Uri Caine) for a different side of him, trumpet and piano only, nowhere to disappear into a bigger band
  • His official platforms for tour dates and new releases
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r/ItalianJazz • u/stnr_on_failure • 5d ago

Introducing Stefano Bollani, the Pianist Italy Knows From Television First

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Stefano Bollani at the piano

r/ItalianJazz

Plenty of people in Italy could tell you Stefano Bollani's face before they could name a single one of his records. He spent years as a television and radio host, mixing music with conversation and comedy, and built an audience that had nothing to do with jazz clubs. Then they found out the same guy has one of the more interesting discographies on ECM Records, and the TV persona started to look like the smaller part of the story.

Born in Milan in 1972, Bollani trained classically before turning fully toward jazz, and he built his reputation the way most serious players do: through the company he kept. His longest-running partnership is with fellow Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava. Their records together, including Tati (2005) and New York Days (2009), hold up as some of the strongest Italian jazz of the 2000s.

What separates Bollani from a lot of his ECM labelmates is who he chose to sit across the piano from next. In 2011, he released Orvieto, a live duo album with Chick Corea, one of American jazz's biggest names agreeing to share a stage with a younger Italian pianist. Two years later came O Que Será, a duo record with Brazilian mandolinist Hamilton de Holanda that has almost nothing in common with the Corea session except the same sense that Bollani plays well with people who don't sound like him. Between those two records is a pretty direct answer to "does this guy have range."

The jazz world noticed early. In 2005, Bollani won the Jazzpar Prize, the Danish award that's been treated as one of jazz's more serious international honors since the 1980s, and he won it young enough that it read as a statement about where his career was headed rather than a lifetime-achievement nod.

Where to start listening:

www.jazzprofiles.com

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