Italian Instabile Orchestra

The Italian Instabile Orchestra (Iio) is an 18-piece big band that includes some of Italy's finest free and avant-garde jazz musicians, including trumpeter Pino Minafra and saxophonists Eugenio Columbo, Gianluigi Trovesi, and Carlos Actis Dato; pianist/composer Giorgio Gaslini and bassist Bruno Tommaso were also early members. The orchestra was originally an ad hoc group organized in 1990 to play the Festival di Noci, an annual Italian jazz event, but Minafra decided to resuscitate it for the next year's festival. In 1992, the band played its first gig outside of Italy, the Rive de Gier festival in France (the music from the band's first Leo Records release was drawn from the Rive de Gier and the second Festival di Noci performances). The band played several more times that year in France, Germany, and Italy, and began to develop a reputation. The journalist/record producer Steve Lake took a liking to the group and recorded it for the ECM label in 1994.

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