Road Movie, Live Music 2012 - 2017

Giovanni Ceccarelli is a pianist, composer, arranger and educator based in Paris. Over a musical career spanning three decades, he has performed with internationally renowned artists, recorded fifty albums, released a Latin Grammy Award-nominated album and appeared on stages around the world. His numerous artistic projects combine original compositions, personal interpretations of music by major contemporary composers and live soundtracks for silent films.

In 2009 he released The Nights of the Beuscher (Philology), a double album of live recordings with the saxophonist Massimo Urbani. His trio album Météores (Bonsaï Music, 2011) was acclaimed by the press. Waxin’ in Camerino (2011) followed a fifteen-year collaboration with jazz master Lee Konitz.

Ceccarelli and his group InventaRio have released three albums: InventaRio (My Favorite Records, 2010), featuring Marisa Monte, Ivan Lins, Petra Magoni and Pacifico as guest artists; InventaRio incontra Ivan Lins (Blue Note/Biscoito Fino, 2012), which received a Latin Grammy Award nomination; and the InventaRio LP, released by Warner Music in 2017.

He performs internationally in a duo with bandoneon player Daniele di Bonaventura, with whom he recorded Mare Calmo (2015) and Eu Te Amo – The Music of Tom Jobim (2019). With saxophonist Marcello Allulli, he released Canto (2019) and has performed live soundtracks for silent films in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

More Morricone (Bonsaï Music, 2020) is a duo album with his longtime musical partner Ferruccio Spinetti. A tribute to Ennio Morricone, it received acclaim from the international press and media.

Alessandro Bravo is an Italian jazz pianist. He completed his piano diploma with the highest marks and graduated in jazz with honours. His professional career began in 1998 with a scholarship to Siena Jazz’s winter courses.

He has performed at Umbria Jazz, Casa del Jazz, Tokyo Jazz Festival and venues including Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica, La Fontaine in Paris and Jazzhaus in Heidelberg. His trio received the special jury prize at the European Jazz Contest in Brussels. His collaborators include Paolo Fresu, Fabrizio Bosso, Jeff Ballard, Miroslav Vitous, Gabriele Mirabassi and Antonello Salis.

His recordings have featured on international compilations and radio programmes. He teaches jazz piano at the F. Morlacchi Conservatory in Perugia. On Road Movie, he joins Piero Delle Monache on Rue des Saisons and Ascolta se piove, recorded live in Rome in 2012.

Alessandro Marzi is an Italian drummer and percussionist. Born into a musical family, he studied piano, bass, drums and percussion before graduating in percussion at Rome’s Santa Cecilia Conservatory. His jazz training included studies with Fabrizio Sferra and Roberto Gatto and workshops with Gary Chaffee and Peter Erskine.

His musical approach combines jazz drumming with an interest in Latin rhythms and percussion timbres. His work includes performances with Nicola Stilo and Toninho Horta, participation in the World Youth Orchestra and concert activity in Europe and Japan. He received the critics’ prize at the Jazz Hoeilaart International Contest in Belgium in 2003 and 2005.

He teaches drums and jazz percussion at the Gaetano Braga Conservatory in Teramo and directs the Malibran Jazz festival. On Piero Delle Monache’s Road Movie, he plays drums on tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9.

Claudio Filippini is an Italian jazz pianist and composer, born in Pescara in 1982. He graduated from the G. B. Pergolesi Conservatory in Fermo and developed his jazz training through workshops with musicians including Kenny Barron, George Cables, Enrico Pieranunzi and Franco D’Andrea.

He received scholarships to Columbia College in Chicago and Siena Jazz, won the Yamaha Music Foundation of Europe piano competition in 2002 and the Massimo Urbani Award in 2003. In 2004 he formed a trio with bassist Luca Bulgarelli and drummer Marcello Di Leonardo, recording for CAM Jazz and performing internationally. Between 2010 and 2014 he toured with Mario Biondi.

His activities encompass solo performance, ensemble work, composition and arranging for cinema and theatre. He teaches jazz piano at the Luisa D’Annunzio Conservatory in Pescara and founded Filippismo Music in 2023. On Road Movie, he plays piano in Piero Delle Monache’s Miramare, recorded live in Chieti in 2012.

Flavia Massimo is a contemporary cellist, sound designer and curator whose work brings together classical music and electronic sound. Her practice expands the cello’s expressive possibilities through extended playing techniques and live electronics.

She has created music for exhibitions, dance and theatre, alongside interactive installations. She is artistic director of Paesaggi Sonori, a festival that places musical performance within mountain landscapes. Her album Glitch explores interference and sonic fragmentation through cello, voice, synthesizers, field recordings and loops.

On Piero Delle Monache’s Road Movie, she plays cello in Un giorno come un altro, recorded live at Teatro Massimo in Pescara in 2017.

Ivan Mazuze is a Mozambican saxophonist, composer and researcher based in Norway. His music connects African traditions with contemporary jazz and draws on his interest in cultural exchange.

He began studying classical piano at Mozambique’s National Music School in 1987 before turning to woodwind instruments and improvisation. He subsequently studied jazz and composition and completed a master’s degree in ethnomusicology at the University of Cape Town.

His albums include Maganda, Ndzuti, Ubuntu, Moya and Penuka. His work combines performance and research into the relationships between traditional music, rhythm and contemporary expression. He has appeared at international festivals and collaborated with musicians including Omar Sosa, Hermeto Pascoal and Manou Gallo.

He appears on Rue des Saisons and Ascolta se piove in Piero Delle Monache’s Road Movie, recorded at Rome’s Auditorium Parco della Musica in 2012.

Mustafa Işleyen is the percussionist credited on Nairobi in Piero Delle Monache’s Road Movie, Live Music 2012–2017. The performance was recorded live at the Italian Cultural Institute in Istanbul in 2016, with Delle Monache, bassist Tito Mangialajo Rantzer and drummer Alessandro Marzi.

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.

Tito Mangialajo Rantzer is an Italian double bassist, electric bassist and educator, born in Milan in 1967. His studies included work with Franco Feruglio, Giorgio Azzolini, Furio Di Castri, Walter Booker, Dave Holland and Barre Phillips.

He has collaborated with Italian jazz musicians including Claudio Fasoli, Antonio Zambrini, Giovanni Falzone, Tino Tracanna and Piero Delle Monache, as well as international performers such as Lester Bowie, Roswell Rudd and George Garzone. His concert work has taken him across Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas.

Alongside extensive recording and film-soundtrack work, he released the solo album Dal basso in alto in 2014 and the quartet album Dedications in 2016. He teaches jazz double bass and electric bass at Milan’s Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory. On Road Movie, he plays bass on tracks 2, 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9.

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.