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Biography
| Amedeo Tommasi Was born in Triest on the 1st December 1935. At the age of six he started studying the piano by taking private piano lessons with a classical teacher. He interrupted his studies after three years because of the war, and then took them on again from 1946 to 1950. At the age of 17 he started attending the University of Bologna and started being interested in jazz. He stet up a trio (piano, bass and drums) with which he does many concerts on a local basis, until in 1959 he takes part in the Jazz Cup, a national competition organized by RAI (Italian National TV) and, even though he was mainly unknown, he classified third on a national level in the modern style section. After this exploit the Amedeo Tommasi Trio starti doing Jazz concerts in all of Italy . He starti playing with the best American musicians travelling through Italy . In '61 he meets Chet Baker, the famous American trumpet player, and becomes a member of his band (a band made up entirely of famous European musicians, such as Giovanni Tommaso, Franco Mondini, René Thomas, Bobby Jaspar). With this group he does a record with RCA which is by most considered to be one of Chet baker's masterpieces, “Chet is Back”. After many concerts played with Chet Baker, Tommasi continues his musical career abroad by taking part in all the major European Jazz festivals, like Comblain La Tour, Liegi, Koblenz, Bled, Jouan les Pins. He then relocates to Rome , after attaining hid university degree in Business Studies. In Rome he is employed as an arrangier by the Itaian RCA, and gets to meet the entire national musical scene. He works with many arrangiers and singers. Tommasi does an England Tour with popular Italian singer Rita Pavone, and directs many orchestras for various tv shows. He also does a European tour with Mikis Teodorakis (memorable the Royal Albert Hall concert) and plays at the Olympia in Paris with Gianni Morandi. Towards the end of the sixties, Tommasi starts to do soundtrack music for movies, and after a few minor films, he works for 10 years with Italian movie director Pupi Avati. He does the music to many of his films as follows: “Balsamus”, “Thomas”, “La mazurca del barone, della santa e del fico fiorone”,”Bordella”, “Tutti defunti tranne i morti”, “Le strelle nel fosso”, “La casa dalle finestre che ridono”, and tv series “Jazz Band” and “Cinema”. From that moment on Tommasi has been working for the tv and movie industry. He composed the sound tracks of many documentaries for the Tv and he took part in many many tv shows. He worked with Bruno Biriaco in making the music for the Tv show “Piacere Rai Uno” (about 300 shows), and he composed the music for the Italian version of the serial “ Santa Barbara ” (about 1000 episodes). More recently he also composed the original music for the TV series “Passioni” with Virna Lisi and Gigi Proietti, produced by Titanus,“Un amore americano” with Brook Shelds and Carlo delle Piane, “Prigioniere del Cuore” with Elisabetta Gardini, and 2 tv series “Non ho l'eta'” with Marco Columbro. Tommasi has also been working with Ennio Morricone for 20 years, providing him with electronic sound material for his films. He recently also worked with him in making the soundtrack of the movies “The Legend of 900” , by oscar winner movie director Giuseppe Tornatore. For this film, Amedeo Tommasi composed 8 jazz tracks, of which the famous “magic Waltz” and “Danny's blues”. Amedeo Tommasi started his teaching career by doing Jazz Harmony at the famous St. Louis music school in Rome , by starting a whole new study approach to Jazz Harmony, based on reharmonizing famous American standards. In this period, Tommasi was teaching a class of over 150 students that were coming from all over Italy to take part to his lessons. Tommasi was head teacher in ear training and jazz harmony for 5 consecutive years at famous international Siena Jazz summer school along with the best Italian jazz players. In 1992, Tommasi held a Jazz summer corse at the Chigiana Academy in Siena for classical composero, invited by famous italian composer Maestro Franco Donatoni. In July of 2003 Amedeo Tommasi did a jazz workshop in Festival International of Bled ( slovenia ), and a concert with his Trio, and in juny of 2005 he did a jazz record with the famous classical violinist Jernej Brence, and rhythmic session. Amedeo Tommasi's career continues both in terms of teaching and composition of soundtracks for the movie and tv industries. |
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