Gabriele Mitelli

Posted on by
photo by Ziga Koritnik

Gabriele Mitelli (Brescia, 1988) is a musician, composer and performer. He works in experimental music and avant-garde jazz. His main instrument is the trumpet, but he plays many wind instruments and modular synthesizers as well. He has created sound installations and site-specific performances. 

“Young trumpet player Gabriele Mitelli brings a doncherryesque quality to the projects he is involved in, but his expressiveness is undoubtedly a twenty-first century’s one. (he has) the potential to bring a whole new audience to the genre.” (Enrico Bettinello)

Watch and listen to him solo
Watch him in an art installation



The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters

Photo collage: Ziga Koritnik

Mariam Rezaei (turntables), 
Mette Rasmussen (alto sax), 
Gabriele Mitelli (piccolo trumpet, electronics), 
Lukas Koenig (drums)

Forged in the crucible of turntablist Mariam Rezaei’s November 2023 residency at London’s Café Oto, The Sleep Of Reason Produces Monsters is an incendiary new quartet featuring Mette Rasmussen on alto saxophone, Gabriele Mitelli on piccolo trumpet and electronics, and Lukas Koenig on drums. Their punk approach to free improvisation draws on elements of jazz, noise, hip-hop, techno and new music to create a thrilling sonic maelstrom that is beyond category or convention. 

As Rezaei scratches diverse samples – Iranian vocoder melodies, doom guitar riffs, wailing saxophones, torrential drums – into ecstatic new forms, Mitelli blows a wild trumpet, wrangles his noise boxes and hollers cosmic chants. Rasmussen plays with her characteristic blend of ferocity and precision, jousting with Rezaei and Mitelli while surfing Koenig’s waves of breakbeats, heavy metal thunder and free jazz abstraction. It’s a thrilling example of where experimental music is at right now, as creative musicians from diverse backgrounds build a world beyond genre.  

Listen


The Elephant

Gabriele Mitelli – piccolo trumpet, voice, electronics
Pasquale Mirra – vibraphone, voice, electronics
Cristiano Calcagnile – drums, percussion, voice

The Elephant was founded in 2017, when the trio did an artistic residency at Ground Music Festival (Brescia) with filmmaker collective Unzalab. Together they realised “Ver”: a live performance of expanded cinema during which musicians and filmmakers, between dialogue and improvisation, led the audience on a journey through space to discover fantastic new worlds.

That same year they participated in the Venice Biennale in the French Pavilion, inside the Opera set up by Xavier Veilhan. The pavilion was transformed into a large sound box in which the band played for three days using a multitude of acoustic instruments and synthesisers.
The band performed in several Italian clubs, as a trio and also as The Elephant Plus, hosting incredible musicians like Rob Mazurek, Jeff Parker, Alexander Hawkins, Danilo Gallo, Chad Taylor and many others.
They recorded their first album in 2023 in Reggio Calabria, published by We Insist! Records, with contributions from Rob Mazurek and Damon Locks.

Listen


Three Tsuru Origami

photo by Mario Coppola

Gabriele Mitelli – cornet, soprano sax, voice, percussion
John Edwards – double bass
Mark Sanders – drums

Gabriele Mitelli’s European trio has a clear mission statement: to distance itself from cliché, and to take the path less travelled. The music is a journey to the heart of improvisation, where jazz is once again a gamble – an edgy practice where risk-taking is central to progress. Mitelli’s bandmates are two great English musicians, for whom noise and revolt are a way of life: bassist John Edwards, and drummer Mark Sanders. All three are tireless experimenters, who have played in various combinations alongside the likes of Evan Parker, Roscoe Mitchell, Sunny Murray, Peter Brötzmann, Louis Moholo-Moholo, and Wadada Leo Smith: collaborations which speak of courage and freedom, integrity, and commitment. Brace yourselves: there is a whole world to discover here.

Listen 


Star Splitter

photo: Star Splitter by giulocopoblanco

Rob Mazurek – piccolo trumpet, electronics, voice
Gabriele Mitelli – cornet, soprano sax, electronics, voice

Facing each other. No filters, no mediations. Through mirrors and mutual recalls, constantly walking the tightrope. Rob Mazurek and Gabriele Mitelli: trumpeters who are not just trumpeters, musicians who made the ‘beyond’ and the ‘elsewhere’ their way of life. Mazurek, a revered master. At the heart of the Chicago scene for almost two decades now, catalyst of energies, tireless experimenter and focal point between the dancing legacy of Sun Ra and the uncompromising impulses of the most non-aligned (post-)rock, between the lesson of Bill Dixon and the majestic path of the AACM generation. Mitelli, young and wayward, instinctive and courageous in rushing headlong into the less comfortable situations and the most unlikely contexts. They had to meet one day. It’s about affinity and consonance. A matter of life. A matter of music.

“The duo’s playing was raw, uninhibited and real. Their sonic cornucopia, wild and free, is one of the most exciting and convincing meldings of electronic and acoustic forces I’ve heard” (Andy Hamilton)

Listen and watch


Please see Mitelli’s website for all his projects.

Concerts of Gabriele Mitelli