Dado Moroni

Born in Genoa, Italy, on 20 October 1962, Edgardo Moroni took up the piano while still very young, spurred by a household steeped in music. His father performed as a dance-band vocalist and his grandfather as an opera singer, yet Moroni gravitated toward jazz; by his early teens he had also adopted the bass. Recordings owned by his father—featuring Erroll Garner, Earl “Fatha” Hines, Art Tatum and Fats Waller—shaped his first musical preferences. Throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, steady work alongside such Italian figures as Franco Ambrosetti and Gianni Basso, together with visiting Americans including Freddie Hubbard, James Moody and Clark Terry, steadily broadened both his skills and his standing.

He belonged to the trio led by Jimmy Woode, performed with Mingus Dynasty, and traveled widely with artists spanning mainstream, hard-bop and contemporary jazz. Repeated trips to the United States, coupled with prominent concerts and favorably received sideman appearances on albums alongside Ray Brown, Jesse Davis, Tom Harrell and Lee Konitz, anchored his reputation there. Although Moroni’s poised and energetic style remains rooted in bop, his performances frequently incorporate echoes of the pianists he first encountered—Waller and Tatum among them—producing a richly varied musical surface.