Giorgio Albanese was born 30 years ago in Ostuni (Puglia) in southern Italy. He has represented Italy three times at the prestigious World Accordion Championships and won more than 30 national and international musical competitions, becoming one of the youngest accordion players with the most awards. In 2009 he gained a degree in Jazz Music at the Conservatory of Music “Niccolò Piccinni,” Bari and in 2012 he specialized in Contemporary Languages with focus in Composition and Improvisation at the Conservatory of Music, “Nino Rota”, Monopoli (BA). In 2017 he completed a master’s degree in Classical and Contemporary Accordion, where, inspired by the works of Pauline Oliveros and John Cage, he composed one of the first examples of contemporary compositions for accordion and electronica.

He has collaborated with many leading musicians of both national and international fame, among them, Karl Berger (USA), John Thicai (DEN), Gianni Lenoci (IT), Steve Potts (USA), Mirko Guerrini (ITA), Mikael Swafirowski (FIN), Ricardo Tejero (SPA), Yedo Gibson (BRA), Eugenio Colombo (ITA), Michele Rabbia (ITA), Pino Minafra (ITA), Roberto Ottaviano (ITA), Carlo Actis Dato (ITA), Ricardo Tejero (SPA) William Parker (USA), Ned Rothenberg (USA), Francisco Mela (CU), Bruno Raberg (SE) Marco Pignataro (ITA), Adam Cruz (USA), Kenny Werner (USA) and Louciana Souza (BRA) among others. He has also been actively involved in a wide variety of musical projects that span traditional as well as more contemporary jazz, world and classical contemporary music, working across multiple disciplines such as theatre, dance and cinema. His music is influenced by world sounds and sound experimentation, producing a more profound, intrinsic language of music.

Artistically he focused on developing his own approach to music completely independent from the predominant aesthetic standards. This approach has enabled him to conceive the accordion as a “modern” sound and language, a synthesis of a rich artistic journey which finds its foundation in the language of contemporary jazz.
His original, musical works were used in the short film “L’ultima partenza” and for the Tricolore Company based in London. From the start, he has experimented with the interaction between sound and video, and more generally between visual arts and music, founding his Apulian Lab Orchestra in 2015 where he always looked for the most innovative ways of making music through the combination of different art forms.

Since January 2018 he’s been studying Jazz Composition and Film Scoring at Berklee College of Music and is part of the advanced performance program at Berklee Global Jazz Institute where he is studying with legends of contemporary jazz, such as Danilo Perez, Joe Lovano, Dave Liebman, John Patitucci, Ben Street, Adam Cruz.

He works on different projects and holds concerts all over the world: Italy, France, Argentina, United Kingdom, United States, Australia, China, South Korea, The Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Egypt, Morocco, Croatia, Finland and the Dominican Republic.

He also presents workshops and master classes on modern accordion, as well as jazz and free improvisation, influenced and inspired by both the Afro-American jazz tradition and European Contemporary Music.