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Enrico Merlin

Enrico Merlin is one of those unusual cases of an accomplished musician and composer who is at the same time an acclaimed expert on the subject of 20th century music. These two worlds which rarely come together in a single person, have infused the artist with an exceptionally creative and expressive performing talent and at the same time have inspired numerous successful literary publications. As a musician he has played on more than 40 different recordings alongside artists such as Steven Bernstein, Giorgio Gaslini, Michael Manring, Markus Stockhausen, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, to name but a few, and has also performed at numerous international Music Festivals together with artists such as Carla Bley, Mederic Collignon, Garrison Fewell, Paolo Fresu, Mark Baldwin Harris, Lee Konitz, Joe Lovano, Boris Savoldelli, Maria Schneider, Giovanni Sollima, Elliott Sharp, John Surman, Steve Swallow, Henry Threadgill, Tino Tracanna, and many more besides. He has been the founder and leader of several bands including the Merlin UN-Covered Music Project which was recently selected by the Italian Jazz Magazine JazzIt to represent the new wave of Italian Jazz at Webnotte, a television broadcast hosted by Repubblica TV / Radio Capital TV. Worthy of note amongst his more recent musical endeavors are his solo guitar and electronics album Unframed... Straight Ahead! (a successful crowdfunding project); Pale Blue Dot (incidental music for the theatrical piece); a CD inspired to Frank Sinatra (seen as an alien being) along with Francesco Cusa, under the name Frank Sinapsi, Social Music with a sextet named Molester sMiles, and the guitar-duo Maledetti! with Valerio Scrignoli. He also writes music for the theatre and for documentaries and promotes, together with Andrea Brunello, an innovative form of interaction between words and sounds which they call Jazz Teatrale (Theatre Jazz). At the Fringe Festival of Edinburgh in 2013, Enrico performed for an entire month in the show The Principle of Uncertainty, and then in many european venues and at Next Einstein Forum in Kigali, Rwuanda, in 2018. From 2015 through 2018 he was elected one of the 10 best Italian guitar players by Jazzit Magazine readers.

On the musicology front, Enrico has an undisputed worldwide reputation as one of the most important experts on the music of Miles Davis. His comprehensive and painstakingly detailed catalogue of released and unreleased works, parts of which have been published both in written and in multimedia form (first and foremost the DVD A Different Kind of Blue – Miles Davis at Isle of Wight, Eagle Vision), led to his nomination back in the 90's by Gordon Meltzer (Davis' last producer) as the official discographer for the milesdavis.com website.

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