STEFANO DI BATTISTA QUINTET . La Dolce Vita

Born in Rome (1969), Stefano Di Battista initiated himself into music during childhood, in a neighborhood orchestra composed mainly of brass.  Having started the saxophone at the age of thirteen, he came to jazz through the records of Art Pepper and Cannonball Adderley, two musicians who will remain lasting influences.  He then follows an academic training before starting to “do the job” in pop music.  His first meeting with Massimo Urbani, an Italian alto saxophonist admirative of Charlie Parker’s style, also plays a decisive role in his ambition to become a jazz musician.  Encouraged to go to Paris by the pianist Jean-Pierre Como, Stefano Di Battista quickly makes his way there among several musicians, who help him getting started, notably drummer Aldo Romano and conductor Laurent Cugny, who invites Stefano to join the Orchestre National de Jazz.  Even if he is mainly active in France, he maintains close links with the Italian jazz community, recording with his compatriots Enrico Rava (1996), Rita Marcotulli (1998), Daniele Scannapieco (2003) and Dario Rosciglione (2004). Debut as a leader and in 1997, recording “Volare” (Label Bleu, 1997) and then a series of albums for Blue Note, continuing a brilliant career with 17 albums as a leader.

In 2024 he released his new album “La Dolce Vita”.  La Dolce Vita is more than just a film title; it is a gateway to a whole other world.  A world of silver-screen fantasies, but also one of life, passion, style, desire, beauty and dreams, which emerged during a unique period in Italian history, and which have continued to resonate through the decades, right up to the present day.

Stefano Di Battista decided that the time had come to bask in this resonance and create an album that combined the brilliance of the great Italian music of yesteryear with the need to keep it alive, scintillating and eternal.  The album aims “to explore some of the extensive and wonderful Italian repertoire from the ‘Dolce Vita’ years onwards and bring it to the attention of today’s global audience”, Stefano Di Battista explains.  “These compositions epitomize the Italian culture and the skill of our great composers, drawing both on what was undoubtedly Italy’s golden age and on the legacy of those years that lives on inside us today”.

Stefano Di Battista is a master of sound and melody, virtuoso in his improvisations and authentic in his approach to the song.

Sources: www.stefanodibattista.eu/en/