Artist · Saxophone
Piero Delle Monache
Biography
Born in 1982, Piero Delle Monache is a saxophonist and composer from Abruzzo, Italy. The Jazzit Awards ranked him among Italy’s ten leading tenor saxophonists for four consecutive years.
In April 2015 he was invited to join the Young Italian All Stars, an ensemble of musicians under 35 created to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the Casa del Jazz in Rome. The guests at the event included Pietro Grasso, then President of the Italian Senate.
He studied at Siena Jazz, Columbia College Chicago and the Saint Louis College of Music in Rome. During seminars in Rome, he worked as an assistant and translator for Mark Turner and Chris Potter.
A winner of the 2012 Premio Clessidra, he developed a teaching approach based on his thesis, “Zen and the Overtones: A Teaching Method for Learning to Play the Saxophone Naturally”, presented at the end of his two-year postgraduate jazz programme at the Conservatorio G. B. Martini in Bologna. He also earned a degree in Political Science, with a focus on economics, in Bologna; his 2005 thesis examined the recording industry.
Open to other art forms and expressive languages, he has collaborated with musicians including Flavio Boltro, Francesco Bearzatti and Andy Gravish, as well as Olympic gymnast and dancer Fabrizia D’Ottavio and sand artist Gabriella Compagnone, known for her appearances on Italia’s Got Talent. An encounter between music and design led to a limited-edition terracotta sculpture, The Thunupa Seed, made by Officina delle Invenzioni and dedicated to his second album and the Thunupa African Tour of October 2013.
An active concert performer, Delle Monache has appeared on all three RAI radio networks and received coverage in national media. Alongside the specialist music press, these include XL di Repubblica, Rolling Stone and Alias, the cultural supplement of Il Manifesto. International coverage includes Jazz Magazine, Belgium’s Musiq3 radio, the Cape Times and Kenya’s The Star.
He is also an artistic director. Among the events he has organised and promoted in Abruzzo are Arches in Jazz (2005–2009), Concerts in Brasserie (2012) and the first edition of FBJazz (2010). Guests have included Alain Caron, Frank Gambale, Marco Tamburini, Kelly Joyce, Bepi D’Amato and Trem Azul.