My experience with Enrico is the most beautiful musical story I know. In fact, it might be one of the most beautiful ones ever told. Enrico knows how to do these things: He knows how to reach beyond difficult obstacles with the strength in his heart, and he knows how to wait patiently. Because he waited for me, just as he has waited for all those whose future he had imagined before they themselves had begun to suspect it. Now I feel the need to return to that experience, assuming a new role for myself. This story begins in a small neighborhood of a city which must renew itself each day to survive. "Little Italy" is a story about the lives of 5 men. Four of them are young, and it's time for the fifth one to stop acting like he is too.

These five young men would never have expected to meet in the same room, a room whose windows look out upon the a new world, between memories of the past and hopes for the future. I want to relive the experience I had with Enrico from the other side. Because the young will not stay that way for ever, but their first steps into the wide world will be aglow with the light of discovery.
Little Italy is a story of musical migration. A story about times when Italians were setting sail for parts unknown in search of fortune, opportunity, or simply basic human dignity. This is the story of young women and young men who left everything behind, risking all, and losing (or finding) everything they sought. Little Italy is a band with an inimitable sound playing music which is greater than the sum of its parts.

Orchestra Little Italy was born in a moment of radical change in my life. I suddenly realized that in recent years, I had played exclusively with musicians who were older than me, almost none of them from Italy. Like many realizations, this one came from a moment of sharing my thoughts with a friend, in this case that friend was Dan Kinzelman. As we talked, I decided to create a new group with young Italian jazz musicians. I wanted something unconventional in terms of instrumentation: a quintet with two guitars and two drum sets.

"At that point, I started looking for the musicians best suited to the project. To my surprise, it didn't take me long to find them, and I am thrilled to share the stage with  Stefano Carbonelli and Nicolò Faraglia on guitar, and drummers Federico Negri and Giovanni Iacovella. I have no doubt that you will hear these names a lot in the near future, and for good reason: I could speak about their individual talents for hours, but I prefer to think of Little Italy as a band, with it's own sound, creating a musical world which goes far beyond the sum of the individual musicians. There is a group dynamic here, something which lives a life of its own. The music we play is a suite I wrote which tells the story of an imaginary voyage undertaken with Italian migrants from throughout history, as they meet and interact with other migrants from other parts of the world. Obviously, these meetings occur while at sea." (Excerpt from and interview with LIBERO FARNè in All About Jazz)