Meet Michele Tino | Jazz Musician

We had the good fortune of connecting with Michele Tino and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Michele, how do you think about risk?
I believe nowadays starting a musical career involves a big amount of risks on many different levels. The first level is definitely the artistic one: in our times we’re witnessing a big change in how we have access to music in our everyday’s life; the enormous amount of music we are exposed to is somehow anesthetizing us and our taste. Therefore it is extremelly hard for a musician to try and break this barrier that is making every listener unconsciously very exigent. The only way an artist can make himself noticeable is to take as much risk as he can to give the listener something different from what he or she expects (and something that he or she might like or not). Beyond that, of course, the idea of a musical carrier is very risky itself as there are very few countries in the world nowadays that recognize an artist as a real worker and that developed some social instruments that help the artist concentrate on his or her art without concerning about the continuous risk of bankruptcy or starvation.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
Well, to be honest I don’t really feel like I’m anywhere near to having reached my goals today. And that’s mainly because we all tend to set the bar on an higher level as soon as we get close to it. But, besides that, as jazz musicians we are all aware that it’s very hard for us to reach a very big audience nowadays or to make a lot of money, therefore many of us quickly stop considering it in terms of making a successful career and we try to focus on our artistic development and goals. Making music, composing it, playing, improvising, has slowly become for me a way of expressing myself, my personality, developing a personal language that, in the same time, is very individual but it connects you with other people, the musicians you’re playing with and with the audience. That’s really some sort of magic. Of course, I can’t say I’m not proud of the professional goals I reached so far, such as playing in internationally recognized festivals with my bands and performing and recording with some of the most renowned musicians in the world, and I expect to get more and more of these satisfactions. But if I where aiming at that nowadays I would quickly get frustrated, as the world is definitely going in a different direction than valuing this kind of artistic approach.

Any places to eat or things to do that you can share with our readers? If they have a friend visiting town, what are some spots they could take them to?
I’d definitely take him or her to try lampredotto, Florence’s most traditional and tasty dish.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
You’re right, the process of finding your own artistic personality is fed by an infinite series of influences, coming from people mainly but also from life experiences, books, paintings etc. Talking about people, it would be impossible to mention all the people who had an influence on my artistic development, but I’d definitely thank some of my most relevant mentors, such as Nico Gori, Marco Tamburini, Dick Oatts, Simon Righter and Jasper Blom, people who gave me a strong base of musical and instrumental preparation that allowed me to move my first steps on my own in the musical world. And then of course, how not to mention family, especially my parents and my grandparents, who supported me throughout my musical journey.

Website: https://www.micheletino.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/micheletinosax/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/michele.tino/

Image Credits
Shimon Gambourg (Paris Jazz Photos)
Caterina Di Perri