Claudia Carvalho: Velho Continente

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 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.

Claudia Carvalho was born in Guarulhos, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, into a family from Alagoas in northeastern Brazil. Her father was a singer and composer of samba de raiz, and her mother raised her children with the folk music of northern and northeastern Brazil.

From an early age, she encountered a wide range of musical traditions, including baião, reisado, frevo, ciranda, bumba meu boi, xote and xaxado, as well as samba. She has participated in numerous festivals and received recognition for her work.

She has lived in Paraguay and performed in theatres and clubs across Latin America. Her international appearances have included Jamaica, Angola and Sierra Leone. In Italy, she developed a lasting artistic partnership with the Piero Delle Monache Quartet, with whom she recorded Velho Continente.

Her distinctive style draws on a variety of Brazilian and Latin American musical traditions.

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.

Claudia Carvalho was born in Guarulhos, in the Brazilian state of São Paulo, into a family from Alagoas in northeastern Brazil. Her father was a singer and composer of samba de raiz, and her mother raised her children with the folk music of northern and northeastern Brazil.

From an early age, she encountered a wide range of musical traditions, including baião, reisado, frevo, ciranda, bumba meu boi, xote and xaxado, as well as samba. She has participated in numerous festivals and received recognition for her work.

She has lived in Paraguay and performed in theatres and clubs across Latin America. Her international appearances have included Jamaica, Angola and Sierra Leone. In Italy, she developed a lasting artistic partnership with the Piero Delle Monache Quartet, with whom she recorded Velho Continente.

Her distinctive style draws on a variety of Brazilian and Latin American musical traditions.

Cristina Carvalho is a songwriter whose music and lyrics appear on her sister Claudia Carvalho’s album Velho Continente. Her contributions include “Acredito”, “Como um rio” and “Luiz”. The recording brings her songs into dialogue with Brazilian musical traditions and the jazz arrangements of Piero Delle Monache and his quartet.

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.