Paolo Silvestri

Composer, conductor, and pianist Paolo Silvestri specializes in projects that involve jazz or popular music. He has been most active as an arranger on jazz or pop recordings that involve an orchestral aspect. Silvestri was born in Genoa, Italy, on April 17, 1960. He studied at the Conservatorio Niccolò Paganini in Genoa, graduating with a degree in piano in 1983. From 1981 to 1986, he studied composition with Sylvano Bussotti at the Scuola di Musica di Fiesole, and in 1995, he won the International Composition Competition for Jazz Orchestra held in Barga, Tuscany. The following year, he began a long collaboration with jazz trumpeter Enrico Rava, composing for him a ballet score, Ragazzi Selvaggi, and conducting the Orchestra Accademia della Scala on a concert program called Gershwin 100 Anni. Silvestri has undertaken a wide variety of musical enterprises, but generally, they involve an encounter of some kind between pop and classical music or jazz and classical music. He has participated in numerous performances and recordings with symphony orchestras and big bands, mostly serving as arranger. In 2001, he earned an early recording credit on the album Not One Word by pop singer Ivano Fossati, and he has gone on to provide orchestral scoring for a variety of other pop and jazz projects in Italy, including Civica Jazz Band's album Italian Jazz Graffiti (2002), the album Aniversario (2004) by the group Aires Tango, and the You've Changed album by pop singer Fabrizio Bosso. Silvestri has remained active as a composer as well, penning a variety of film scores, including those for Peter del Monte's Controvento (2000) and the 2008 comedy Il cosmo sul comò, as well as for a variety of Italian television programs and musical and dance presentations. In 2023, Silvestri mounted the podium once again, conducting the album Postcards from Italy: Italian Music for Film by soprano saxophonist Marco Albonetti. Silvestri is on the faculty at the Conservatorio di Musica Antonio Buzzolla in Adria, teaching composition, orchestration, big band, and ensemble music.
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