Dan Kinzelman was born and raised in the United States but has been living in Italy since 2005.

 

He quickly rose to prominence on the Italian scene, joining the band of Italian trumpet legend Enrico Rava where he worked as soloist, arranger and musical director. In recent years, his focus has shifted to long-term collaborations with emerging talents of his own generation such as Giovanni Guidi, Simone Graziano and William Tatge, and above all collective trio Hobby Horse and its extended version, Ghost Horse.

 

His work is characterized by a strongly irreverent streak, mixing a profound knowledge of jazz history with an appetite for risk and sonic exploration. His projects are difficult to categorize, often combining wildly distant musical languages into something disquieting but at the same time seductive, their aesthetic coherence deriving paradoxically from the extreme contrasts between the elements at play.

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He is a central figure in Italy’s flowering creative music scene, highly in demand both as a bandleader and as a soloist.  His bands have performed at many of the most important music festivals and clubs in Europe and the USA, including Umbria Jazz (Italy), Treibhaus (Austria), Ausland (DE), Novi Sad Jazz Festival (Serbia), Jazz in Bess (Switzerland), Skylark Chicago (USA), Juttutupa (Finland), to name but a few.