DRUMMER SINGER PRODUCER TUTOR
BIO
This journey began more than twenty years ago, after completing the School of Fine Arts in Rome.
I started getting my first chops together as a drummer in a little music school for a year, which allowed me to audition and enrol on another two-year course in Jazz, with the Big Band directed by Danilo Terenzi at the Testaccio’s Popular School of Music.
Then I entered the Conservatoire Morlacchi in Perugia, obtaining a Classical Percussion MA in 1998, during which time I also took part in a few Berklee summer courses, during the Umbria Jazz Festival.
I kept myself busy during the formative years and after, in the classical/contemporary environment, working with a few orchestras and percussion ensembles, also collaborating with composers, until I felt it was time to move on and explore percussion languages from other cultures with experts from different countries, before definitively moving abroad in 2002.
In these 20 years living in the UK, I have been playing and working on all sorts of music projects, being lucky enough to find myself in a very creative scene in London, at the dawn of the new millennium.
While my initial background and the centre of gravity of my inspiration has always been jazz music, I managed to expand my artistic horizons by playing Turkish folk, Brazilian music, Drum & Bass, Reggae, Ska and Rocksteady, Funk, and much more, as well as starting to learn the ropes of music production at the Hurricane Studios, and later on my own, using DAWs as Cubase and Logic.
My first collaboration started with a fellow artist from Italy, Mauro Remiddi, later known as Porcelain Raft, with whom we created one of the first live looping acts cruising a mix of Pop/Lounge Dub, named Bongo Brothers, releasing an EP titled Bongo Station.
In one of our live residencies, I stumbled upon a singer and artist who became another music partner for the years to come, née Bloom de Wilde de Ligny. I produced and played in her EP The Song the Ship, which she wrote under the pen name Oo is an instrument.
After that, I recorded an album, named after the singer-songwriter, Conil, with whom I toured the UK and performed at SXSW in Austin and NXNW in Toronto. The LP had a couple of great cameos: "The Sound Alchemist" Chad Blake ( Tom Waits, Pearl Jam, Peter Gabriel, and so on… ), and Alan Thompson, from the band Pentangle, on Double Bass.
Another relevant project has been part of the creation and recording sessions of the one-hit-wonder band Sam and the Womp, with Aaron Horn as a producer and synth bass wizard, and again Bloem de Wilde on vocals, which led to the release of the chart-topper track Bom Bom.
Among the many artists, I have the pleasure of working with, I should mention the pianist Dom Pipkin, one of the best representatives of New Orleans’ piano style in the UK.
Amadis and the Ambassadors, with whom I recorded in 2019 the debut album 1979 Dig Deeper.
The Delta Trio, led by twice British Blues Award winner Marcus Bonfanti.
As drummer and singer: piano duo, a Jazz trio with piano and double bass; The Pirates, as a quartet or quintet, playing a fusion of Jazz and Jamaican music; the Brass Volcanoes, a New Orleans-style style Brass Band.
I am also giving one-to-one drum lessons from my studio in North London, recording drums for various artists, and working on some releases for my jazz trio on the Crate Classic record label.