Giorgio Gaslini
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Giorgio Gaslini (born October 22, 1929 in Milan) is an Italian jazz pianist and composer.
He began performing at 13 and recorded with his jazz trio at 16. In the 1950s and 1960s he performed with his own quartet. He has been the first Italian musician mentioned as a "new talent" in the Down Beat poll and the first Italian officially invited to a jazz festival in the USA (New Orleans 1976-77). He collaborated with great American solists, such as Anthony Braxton, Steve Lacy, Don Cherry, Roswell Rudd, Eddie Gomez, Max Roach, but also with Gato Barbieri and Jean-Luc Ponty. He has also arranged the compositions of Albert Ayler and Sun Ra for solo piano, which have issued on the Soul Note label. He also composed the soundtrack of Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte (The Night).
From 1991 to 1995 Gaslini composed works for Carlo Actis Dato renowned Italian Instabile Orchestra. As to contemporary music, he composed symphonic works, operas and ballets represented at the Scala Theatre in Milan and other Italian theatres. He has composed stage musics and also done 40 film scores. He has been deemed a godfather of hardcore improvised music in Italy and has been the first holder of jazz courses at the Santa Cecilia Academy of Music in Rome (1972-73).
