The Oltremare Quartet

A lot of excellent Jazz musicians are graduates from the Guildhall School of Music including the composer, double bass player and leader of the Oltremare Quartet Andrea Di Biase. In fact while at the Guildhall Di Base met another Guildhall graduate Bruno Heinen, creator of the Dialogues Trio which included Di Biase and Jon Scott (drummer for the Oltremare Quartet). It was a collaboration that resulted in the Twinkle Twinkle album released by Babel label 2011 and also featured Julian Siegal on sax and clarinet. Other members of the Oltremare Quartet include Mike Chillingworth (alto sax) and Antiono Zambrini (piano). The Quartet’s first album Uncommon Nonsense, whose compositions were written by Di Biase and Antonio Zambrini also on babel label, is a meeting of two musical worlds one rooted in the melodic style of Italian composers such as Nino Rota and the other in the harmonic and rhythmic style of British composers such as Kenny Wheeler and John Taylor.

The Oltremare Quartet will launch their album Uncommon Nonsense at the Vortex Jazz club 28^th May. http://www.vortexjazz.co.uk/this-months-programme.html