I was born in Teramo in the early hours of May 21st, 1981. At the age of 5, a few weeks before my first day of school, I picked up a guitar for the first time, driven by the desire to emulate my father, himself a guitarist, who taught me my first chords.
My musical training, however, began first of all with the records and tapes I found scattered around the house. I remember very clearly those covers and labels with names like Bob Dylan, Little Richard, the Beatles, Donovan, Joni Mitchell, the Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton, and Janis Joplin.
When the number of chords I was learning started to grow, I decided it was time to deepen my study of the guitar and music theory, so at the age of 11 I took private lessons with Maestro Franco Pellegrini in Teramo, with whom I studied for about 4 years.
In June 1993 my family and I moved to Montorio al Vomano, about 10 km from Teramo. There I was lucky enough to meet some peers who, like me, wanted to play music, and with them I formed my first band: H2O. Together with this band, my first original songs were born and about a year later, on June 3rd, 1994, I had my first performance on a “real” stage.
After the band broke up, from 1996 onwards I had the opportunity to play with several other groups including The Boomerang, Gli Anfiteatri, Jellyfish and the Rock and Roll, and The Flaming Clouds.
In 1999, together with Fabio Polisini (former H2O), I formed Amentia (www.amentia.it), a pop-rock band I played with until 2007 and with which I was also very active as a writer of original songs.
Meanwhile, the year 2000 came and, at the invitation of Tommaso Paolone, I started another parallel group much more oriented towards rock-blues, called The Mufflers, and shortly afterwards I was invited to take part in an ambitious soul and rhythm & blues project: The Castle Boys Band.
In 2001 I had the good fortune to visit South America, spending about two months in Venezuela, where I was able to deepen my knowledge of South American music.
In 2003, while studying at the University of L’Aquila, I moved for 5 months to the city of Preston in northern England for a student mobility project. There I formed the band The Likes together with other English musicians, playing several gigs in clubs and pubs around the United Kingdom.
After returning to Italy and finishing my university studies, I took off again, this time for Dublin, where I stayed for 5 months. During my time in Ireland I had the pleasure and good fortune to collaborate with several local artists.
Back in Italy again in 2006, I approached jazz for the first time when clarinetist Fabrizio Leonetti invited me to form a group dedicated to interpreting some jazz standards. This led to the creation of the Fa Maggiore Jazz Band, which remained active for several years.
In 2008 I took part in the national guitar competition organized by FBT, where I placed third with my song The Busker Song.
In 2011, shortly after my father passed away, I was happily involved in the birth of a new band: The Soul Buddies, a soul music band with which I still perform and for which I have written several original songs, including the single “Good Enough,” released on 7-inch vinyl in March 2019.
Shortly after the birth of The Soul Buddies, out of the ashes of the Fa Maggiore Jazz Band, the Dixie Hogs were formed, with whom I shared an intense live activity for years up until 2019. However, the Dixie Hogs were not my first experience in this genre, since a few years earlier I had joined the Seven Sins Dixieland Orchestra as a banjo player.
In March 2019 I won the talent show Italia’s Got Talent alongside pianist Antonio Sorgentone, with whom I have been collaborating since the early 2000s and with whom I still frequently perform live and in the studio.
In November 2019 my first solo album Flashbacks was released, where I am involved both as a musician and as the writer and composer of all the tracks on the record.
In addition to my own projects over the years, I have had the pleasure of collaborating with international artists such as American drummer Rick Latham and Canadian singer Rebecca Noelle.
