Gabriele di Franco e Francesco Negro

GABRIELE di FRANCO, born in Italy and currently residing in Brussels is a European composer, arranger, and guitarist. He defines himself as an ambiguous composer and guitar player; living that undefined space between jazz, classical, and world music, focusing on deepness and consciousness in the process of making choices, or in other words: composing. Gabriele graduated in 2014 with a major in Jazz guitar at the Conservatory of Nino Rota (IT) with an additional year of study at the renowned Musik und Kunst Privatunisität der Stadt Wien (AT). He holds a Master in Jazz Composition & Arranging from the Royal Conservatory of Brussels (KCB), where he studied with composers such as Kris Defoort, Lode Mertens, Peter Swinnen. Gabriele has received several international awards and honours for his works. Among them, In 2012 he won the “Band Revelation of the year” prize at Jazzup Festival (Frosinone – IT) with his project Bija. In 2017 Gabriele won the SIAE (Italian Copyright Company) scholarship for authors under 35. Again, in November 2017, he won the 2nd prize at the three-year competition “Jazz Comp Graz 2017” for Jazz Orchestra composers under 30 (jury: Ed Partyka, John Hollenbeck, Michael Abene, and Jörg Achim Keller). In June 2019 Gabriele won the “Elevator Jazz Pitch” presenting his music-theatre project LULELA. The inCentive was supported by inJazz (NL) and berthold records (DE). In June 2021, his composition ‘Berlin’ was awarded 3rd prize at the “Helsinki International Big Band Composing Contest” (UMO jazz orchestra – jury memebers: Bob Mintzer, Ed Partyka, Antti Rissanen, and Iro Haarla). Currently, Gabriele is working on his first participative music-theatre project “LULELA”: a multi- layered jazz concert with storytelling where the destiny of the protagonist (and the whole performance) is in the hands of the audience. For LULELA (produced by LODmuziektheater) Gabriele composed music, text, and dramaturgy. In January 2021 the text of the music-theatre project LULELA, was also published as a book by Albatros il Filo

FRANCESCO NEGRO Born in Maglie (Lecce, Italy), Francesco started to play piano at 6. In 2007 he graduated in Classical Performance at the "T. Schipa" Conservatory in Lecce and Contemporary Music at the "L. Refice" Conservatory in Frosinone. At 12 he discovers jazz and improvisation and starts to devour every cd he can find to learn more and to practice the "new" language. He attended for two editions the Berklee Summer School at Umbria Jazz and then from 2008 to 2010 the experimental two-year International Jazz Master Program at the Siena Jazz University (John Taylor, Kenny Werner, Danilo Perez, Stefano Battaglia and many more).

Besides the academic studies, Francesco has build over the years his personal path of research and evolution as a musician, following his own sensibility along an ideal thread that runs thru the music of Thelonious Monk, Bud Powell, Lennie Tristano, Abdullah Ibrahim, Bill Evans, John Cage and Keith Jarrett. In the same year he won the Italian Jazz Awards in the Brand New Jazz Act category. In recent years he has deepened the techniques of composition at the Conservatory "N. Rota" of Monopoli graduating in 2020. In 2008 he recorded his debut album "Abbagli" (Philology), followed after three years by "Silentium" (AlfaMusic 2011) the first album of his current trio which features Igor Legari on double bass and Ermanno Baron on drums. In 2014 recorded a new album "Aspettando il Tempo" with his Trio (Silence records 2014 - Da Vinci Publishing 2020). He played with: Adam Nussbaum, Roberto Gatto, Ben Perowsky, John Riley, Drew Gress, Martin Jacobsen, Greg Burk, Laurent Bataille, Greg Glassman, Pekka Pylkkanen, Bruno Ziarelli, Lionel Boccara, Ermanno Baron, Marco Tamburini, Giulio Martino, Daniele Scannapieco, Max Ionata, Achille Succi, Francesco Lo Cascio, Alessandro Minetto, Ettore Fioravanti, Igor Legari, Paola Arnesano, Daniela D'Ercole, Camillo Pace, Marcello Nisi, Vincenzo Presta, Antonio Cotardo, Matteo Bortone, Marcello Allulli, Luca Alemanno, and many more. Show less