Paolo Fresu
b. 1961, Berchidda, Sardinia, Italy. An accomplished trumpet and fluegelhorn player, Fresu was self-taught and grew up playing the band music of his native island. He discovered jazz in 1980, but had to move to the mainland to practise the new-found craft. He gained a degree after studying the trumpet formally at Cagliari Conservatoire, and also attended the music faculty at Bologna. Into the early '80s and onwards, he taught at various music schools, contributed to magazines and wrote for theatres and orchestras as well as leading an excellent jazz quintet. The foundations for his own quintet were laid as a result of meeting like-minded musicians at the 1982 Sienna Jazz seminar, and the band was finally formed in late 1984. Since then it has become the most feted of the '80s Italian new wave (La Nuova Onda), with Fresu winning numerous prizes and polls. He and his band (including the excellent saxophonist Tino Tracanna) are primarily inspired by the classic Miles Davis quintets of the '50s and '60s, and play with considerable panache and conviction. Fresu has worked with Albert Mangelsdorff, Franco D'Andrea Kenny Wheeler, Tony Oxley, John Taylor, Enrico Rava, Paul Rutherford, Dave Holland, Lee Konitz Evan Parker, Michael Nyman, and many others.