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Born in Firenze in 1958, I started to play drums when I was 12 years old, learning my first rudiments from my father, who was also a drummer during the second world war in some domestic jazz band ; since the age of fifteen I was playing in the best known Italian jazz Clubs such as the Music Inn in Rome, the Swing Club in Turin or the Capolinea in Milan, in different groups Conservatorio, Bakunin Jazz Quartet, Aestesis Quartet, or with Massimo Urbani,Nico Vernuccio, Francesco Macianti, Roberto Della Grotta , Luca Flores, Patrizia Scascitelli, Giancarlo Maurino Rita Marcotulli and Danilo Rea, who are people of my age and older jazzmen like Franco Cerri, Oliver Berney, Romano liberatore or on the free jazz side Mario Schiano and Gaetano Liguori.I also ripened several meaningful experiences in those days great American jazzmen such as Tony Scott, Curtis Fuller, Sal Nistico and Chet Baker during their journeys in Italy.
In the second half of the '70s I attended the conservatory "L. Cherubini" in Florence playng also with some where I studied trumpet and then at the consevatoiry "G. Verdi" in Milan where I studied percussions with Franco Campioni. When I was 17 years old I become friend with the American drummer Marvin "Bugalu" Smith and percussionist Karl Potter, with their aid I went deeply into the study of jazz languages, and after a short while I also taught with them in the new-born school of jazz at St. Louis Club in Rome. I was not yet twenty when I attended courses at the Berkley College of Music in Boston and at the Drummer Collective in New York City. In Florence I have been one of the founders of the first jazz school in the city: Centro Attività Musicali "Andrea del Sarto" (CAM) ’76 ; in this structure I developed an intense activity of teaching and educational research both as a teacher until 1988 and as drummer in the orchestra of the school that, with Bruno Tommaso's direction, played in various Italian cities and realized a series of recordings for RAI , the Italian radio and television company .
In the '80s with the musicians listed below I participated many international festivals in Italy and I played concerts in Switzerland, France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and USSR; I also had a short, but intense, experience as producer opening my records company (A Tempo), unfortunately we could just publish three CDs . anyhow these were realized using the best available technological resources of those days, it was actually the first italian DDD production for jazz , this was a project for the promotion of Italian jazz abroad, in which, along with double-bass player Furio di Castri and the journalist Marco Magrini, took place also the American musicians Paul Motian and the great Joe Lovano, the Swedish Anders Jormin and Anders Kjellberg and the Italian jazz stars Franco D'Andrea, Rita Marcotulli and Enrico Rava , who recorded "Toucan" with the group "Giochi Proibiti" were I was the drummer. Could we have done our fourth CD this was supposed to be featuring Massimo Urbani on alto sax, Luca Flores on piano, Furio Di Castri on bass and my number one hero Mr. Elvin Jones on drums.
Piero Borri
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