Bollani

El Chakracanta, Stefano Bollani’s new dynamic live album with two original works of his for piano and orchestra and two tangos by Ástor Piazzolla and Horacio Salgán.

This full-length album from Italian jazz group Stefano Bollani Trio features jazz piano renditions of your favorite American standards.
Italy's Stefano Bollani is a globally renowned jazz, classical, and pop pianist and composer celebrated as much for his entertaining stage demeanor as his dazzling technical prowess. He is also an esteemed broadcaster and writer. Bollani has recorded dozens of albums as a leader in many configurations, from piano solo to big band. Mentored by Italian trumpeter Enrico Rava, he has cyclically collaborated with the elder musician since appearing on 1999's Rava Plays Rava.

Praticamente la storia dietro è che Bollani è stato invitato a comporre la colonna sonora per il film "Caos calmo" di Moretti. Lui ha deciso di raggruppare un gruppo di musicisti con i quali ha lavorato negli ultimi anni (sotto il nome "I visionari"), gruppo che comprende anche Ferruccio Spinetti che abitualmente registra e recita in duo con la moglie di Stefano Bollani, Petra Magoni.

Sheik Yer Zappa represents Stefano Bollani’s hommage to an authentic rock icon. Recorded live during a tour, this cd includes songs of Frank Zappa’s, plus three pieces composed by Bollani’s himself and inspired by the rock star. Bollani is a jazz artist, and this means that Zappa’s songs are reworked and elaborated with his personal touch: he is producing a musical cocktail with his personal shaker (from this comes the title, which also plays on Zappa’s own words). So the results can be in some cases different from the original, but the attitude remains: the typical attitude, and the artistry with which Frank Zappa was able to capture and blend music from all over the world.

L' Orchestra Del Titanic is the first solo album by 25-year-old Florentine pianist Stefano Bollani, "Best New Talent 1999" according to Musica Jazz, Italy's leading jazz's magazine. For years, Bollani, who has lately added his identifiable touch to many Italian jazz records, has expressed in interviews his search for a unique project to fit to his own musical taste to. As a young guy with a witty sense of black humor, the overwhelming recent popularity of the romance and tragedy of the film, Titanic was a perfect place to start.

Stefano Bollani’s solo album ‘Piano Variations on Jesus Christ Superstar’ will be released on 3rd April 2020, 50 years after Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s original concept album. Bollani wanted his version of “JCS” to be completely different from whatever Broadway or London production: “I’ll choose the piano solo formula, because it’s a love affair between myself and this music.” He only sings one song, “Superstar”; the rest of the album is instrumental. Bollani, grateful for the exceptional permission granted to him to re-interpret the cult opera, has freely but respectfully approached the original songs by following his own playful wit, informed by the musical traditions, genres, styles and encounters that have shaped what is considered his very own idiom. For his version of Jesus Christ Superstar Bollani wanted a warm, mellow, profound, dense and clear piano sound. Hence the piano tuned at 432 Hz, which has allowed him to express the warmth and profundity of Lloyd Webber & Rice’s strong round film characters.

Italian piano genius Stefano Bollani's album 'Que Bom' is a genuine hymn to life marked by sparkling liveliness and contagious joy.

Jazz pianist Stefano Bollani was born in Milan, Italy, on December 5, 1972. He began playing piano as a child in order to accompany his singing, but soon concentrated solely on the instrument, enrolling in a conservatory in Florence when he was 11. There, he studied both jazz and pop music, and after graduating in 1993, added his keyboard skills to albums for many of Italy's top pop stars, including Laura Pausini, Irene Grandi, and Jovanotti. When working with the latter in 1996 he met avant-garde jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava, who invited the young pianist to play with him in Paris, an opportunity Bollani quickly accepted.

The pianist has made solo albums before but nothing quite like this, where he not only plays concert grand but also Fender Rhodes and, on a few tracks, sings too. His exuberant style, his technical facility and his sense of fun are clear throughout, from the opening, funky Alleanza and a darkly toned, choppily-rhymed romp through Italy’s most popular song Quando, Quando, Quando to Ary Barroso’s Aquarela Do Brasil, the soul-jazz evergreen, Horace Silver’s The Preacher and Duke Ellington’s Mount Harissa, closing with the classic ballad You Don’t Know What Love Is.

Bollani is the pianist who made such a vivid impression on trumpeter Italian Enrico Rava's recent Miles Davis tribute, also for France's Label Bleu. Rather unexpectedly - and perhaps a little uneasily - for a musician who is evidently both a formidable virtuoso and a structural provocateur, Bollani has opted for a largely orthodox acoustic piano-trio set, bookended by two more abstract unaccompanied pieces.