Patrizio Buanne first saw the light of day in Vienna yet spent the bulk of his childhood in Naples, the city from which his family hailed. His approach draws from Italy’s popular-song heritage rather than classical or operatic traditions, and his sessions have taken place at such storied rooms as Abbey Road Studios in London and Capitol Studios in Hollywood.
As a boy he absorbed the voices of celebrated Italian-American crooners—Mario Lanza, Dean Martin, Al Martino, Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett—while frequenting his father’s pizzeria, an immersion that kindled a lasting passion for the melodies of the 1950s and ’60s. During his years in Austria he captured several regional vocal contests and, at seventeen, performed before Pope John Paul II. After returning to Italy he matriculated at a Roman university and began appearing on television as an entertainer.
Four years on, he encountered producer Christian Seitz; together they headed to Abbey Road to cut his debut album, L’Italiano, a collection built largely around the songs of his youth. Issued in the United Kingdom in February 2005 after he joined Universal Music, the project reached American listeners the following March as the slightly trimmed The Italian. That same autumn, the worldwide release of his second album, Forever Begins Tonight, appeared.
Buanne moved to Warner Music in 2008, and Universal placed an eighteen-track retrospective, Best of Patrizio Buanne, in stores in mid-2009 shortly before his Warner debut, the self-titled Patrizio. Humberto Gatica produced the record, which mixed English-language interpretations of standards such as “Fly Me to the Moon,” the Patsy Cline/Willie Nelson favorite “Crazy” and “You’re My Everything” with several newly written pieces, among them Diane Warren’s “Why Did You Have to Be?,” Paul Barry’s “This Kiss Tonight” and Buanne’s own “Solo Tu (My Baby).” Over the next two years he toured Asia, Australia and the United States, and Patrizio reached number five on Billboard’s Jazz Albums chart.
In 2012 he delivered the German-language album Wunderbar through Warner, then returned to Universal for the 2013 release Dankie/Thank You Suid Afrika, a survey of popular South African songs sung variously in English and Afrikaans and featuring guests Ladysmith Black Mambazo and Nianell. Signed to Universal’s Decca label in 2015, Buanne resurfaced with Viva La Dolce Vita, an album pairing contemporary pop favorites with Italian material.
