Saxophonist, composer and arranger, Christophe Panzani, a traveller's jack-of-all-trades, has been striving to broaden his cultural and musical field of vision since the beginning of his musical apprenticeship. A classical background, his first bands of funk, Brazilian, African and jazz music, pushed him to explore, discover and learn from all kinds of music.
He founded his group, Le pasta project - a tribute to his name and his Italian origins - with Vincent Peirani (accordion), Pierre Perchaud (guitar), Bruno Schorp (bass) and Antoine Paganotti (drums). The group worked with the symphonic orchestra Gradus ad musicam of Nancy, who proposed to Christophe to write and arrange for the orchestra and the group. This work led to a creation at the Salle Poirel in Nancy in January 2009.
Christophe has been a member of the Carla Bley Big Band since 2002, the live album - Appearing nightly - from the 2006 tour was released in autumn 2009 by ECM. Album which was Winner of the 2009 Jazz Journalist Association (JJA) Award as Record of the Year. He plays alongside Steve Swallow, Billy Drummond, Andy Sheppard, Lew Sollof...
He recently recorded a duet album with guitarist Julien Regnier, with Steve Swallow and Andy Sheppard as guest.
He plays regularly in clubs in Paris and on the French and European jazz scene (with Laïa Genc in Germany, Ernie Hammes in Luxembourg, Sandro Gibellini, Franco Testa, Beppe Calamosca... in Italy, England...).
He founded the band The Drops in 2008 with the Italian guitarist Federico Casagrande. Recorded their first album Falling from the Sky in New York in September 2009, album released in November 2010 on Hyenas Records. The second album, recorded during their tour in Italy and France with Ferenc Nemeth on drums, will be released in 2012 on The Drops Music label, created by Federico and Christophe.
Christophe is a sideman in many jazz formations (Pierre Perchaud trio, Bruno Schorp's Color Sextet, Nicolas Moreau 5tet, Florian Pelissier 5tet, Jean-Pierre Como 4tet, 117Element... ) and several groups of different aesthetics: African music (Ousmane Danedjo), Middle-East (Fayçal Salhi 4tet), electro jazz, hip hop (Da Romeo and the crazy moondog band, Electrodeluxe, Hocus Pocus, Milk Coffee and Sugar), latin music (Maria Tejada...).
Christophe is the recipient of a Franco-American grant for Chamber Music America jazz projects in 2010 with New York double bassist Keith Witty. They founded their trio THIEFS with Guillermo E. Brown (drums). Their album was recorded in New York in March 2011. They have been designated as one of the four projects supported in 2012-2013 by the French American Cultural Exchange and the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation.
