Stefano Bollani At the age of six, wanting to become a singer, Stefano Bollani would accompany himself on the family keyboard. A few years later, he recorded a cassette of himself singing and playing, which he sent to his idol Renato Carosone, along with a letter explaining his dream. Carosone replied advising him to listen to a lot of blues and jazz, and so Bollani did. His first record was the second volume of the jazz encyclopaedia published by Fratelli Fabbri. At age 11, he enrolled at the Luigi Cherubini Conservatory of Florence, where he received his diploma in piano in 1993. At age 15, he tread the boards professionally, playing mostly pop, at the same time studying under Luca Flores, Mauro Grossi, and Franco D'Andrea whose seminars he attended at Siena Jazz. Music has no real boundaries for him. That' s why he continues to seek out new collaborations, even in the classical field or in pop music. In the field of classical music he performs as a soloist with symphony orchestra such as the Leipzig Gewandhaus, the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, Santa Cecilia in Rome, the Philharmonic Orchestra of Teatro Regio in Turin, the Verdi in Milan. He collaborated under the direction of conductors such as James Conlon, Jan Latham-Koenig, with whom he recorded the Concert Champetre by Poulenc for the 'British label AVIE records, Clark Rundell and especially Riccardo Chailly, with whom he recordedRhapsody in Blue and Concerto in F by Gershwin in a disc released in September 2010 for Decca Italy and "Sound's of the'30s" released in 2013, in Leipzig with the Gewandhaus Orchestra.