Since the 1970s, multi-reedist Carlo Actis Dato has been active as a performer and recording artist in modern creative jazz. Across the following three decades he appeared on fifty albums, functioning as either leader or co-leader on roughly twenty of them. Deeply embedded in Italy’s creative music community, he helped establish Art Studio, among the earliest ensembles devoted to new jazz in the country. He also belongs to the Italian Instabile Orchestra, an occasional assembly of leading figures from the Italian new-jazz world—among them composer and clarinetist Gianluigi Trovesi and trombonist Sebi Tramontana—which issued several 1990s recordings, one of them a live double-CD set for Leo Records.
Since 1984 he has directed his own quartet, repeatedly named Top Italian Group by Musica Jazz magazine in 1988, 1990, 1992, and 1996; the group has appeared at festivals and on radio broadcasts throughout Europe. Its personnel comprises bassist Enrico Fazio, drummer Fiorenzo Sordini, and reedsman Piero Ponzo. In addition, Dato heads the reeds-only Atipico Trio and shares leadership of the Brasserie Trio, which likewise has a Leo Records release. His résumé further includes stints with Mama Quartet and Mitteleuropa Orchestra, plus collaborations with Georgio Gaslini, Roberto Ottaviano, Oliver Lake, Leroy Jenkins, Franz Koglmann, Pino Minafra, Mark Dresser, assorted members of the Italian Instabile Orchestra, and others. He has participated in numerous theater and dance productions and has taught jazz and saxophone at the Civic School of Torino and at Percstudio Music Information. A duo album with Kazutoki Umezu, Wake Up With the Birds, appeared on Leo at the close of 1999.
