Stefano Di Battista : La Dolce Vita

0000: Italian saxophonist Stefano Di Battista brings La Dolce Vita to Jazz à Vienne, a journey through the Italian popular music that shaped him.

Born in Rome in 1969, Stefano Di Battista picked up the saxophone at thirteen in a neighbourhood brass band, discovered jazz through Art Pepper and Cannonball Adderley, and moved to Paris in 1992 after being heard at the Calvi festival by pianist Jean-Pierre Como. Within two years he had become one of the most sought-after voices in French jazz, joining the Orchestre National de Jazz under Laurent Cugny and recording for Blue Note alongside Elvin Jones and Michel Petrucciani. Flamboyant, lyrical, and technically fearless, he has since built a career that bridges the Italian tradition and the French jazz scene with rare ease.

After his celebrated 2021 tribute to Ennio Morricone, Di Battista returned in 2024 with La Dolce Vita, a programme dedicated to the Italian popular music of his childhood. The repertoire moves through the full emotional spectrum of that tradition: the Neapolitan warmth of "Tu vuò fa l'americano," the bittersweet lilt of "Volare," the melodic genius of Nino Rota, and songs made famous by Paolo Conte and Andrea Bocelli. Italian cinema is everywhere, in the spirit of the arrangements as much as in the titles.

At Jazz à Vienne, Di Battista performs this programme at the heart of his Franco-Italian quintet: music that refuses the distance between feeling and expression, played by a saxophonist who has never been afraid of either.

Genre Live Show (Jazz)
Recording location Jazz à Vienne, France
Production year 2026
Duration 60min
TV Director Fabien Raymond