In 2004 the French Académie du Jazz honored him with the European Musician of the Year Award. Once he'd also received the prestigious Jazzpar Prize in Copenhagen. The popular trumpeter and flugelhorn player Enrico Rava has put Italian jazz on the map. The Miles Davis and Chet Baker influenced musician can look back on a turbulent 40 year career, wherein he made a lot of albums and played in a lot of bands. The musician made a name for himself in the international scene when he started playing in Turin, during the sixties a meeting point for American jazz musicians. Subsequently he left for New York for various periods, where he played with among others Carla Bley's Jazz Composer's Orchestra and Cecil Taylor. On his own albums, from '72 and onward, he developed a beautiful, lyrical style. He has a big interest in free jazz, but this never refrained him from exploring styles like classical and pop. With his own quintet (piano, trombone, bass and drums) he recorded several albums for ECM, including the recently released The Words and the Days.
