Edoardo Ricci is a key figure in the underground music panorama in Italy.
He’s an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, caustic illustrator and irreverent poet.
From Avantgarde Jazz to free improvised music, from experimental rock to primitivist cabaret and noise exploration, his career delineates a unique personality in a forty-year long trip in music from the other side of the fence.
In the late sixties he concentrated on reed instruments. Even if he favors alto saxophone and bass clarinet, over the years Ricci developed his own personal technique on many other wind instruments including trombone.
In the early seventies, he gained notice for playing in Guido Mazzon‘s Gruppo Contemporaneo. He became a revelation in the Italian avant-garde jazz scene and soon he became interested in radical improvisation and experimental music.
In 1973 together with Francesco Donnini he founded the legendary pataphysical orchestra N.E.E.M. based in Florence. A large ensemble that blends composed and improvised music and theatre in its own idiosyncratic way. The Orchestra recorded one cult album in 1978, Come Eravamo Brutti da Piccini on the Materiali Sonori label and a second one, Lo Jodel del Segafanciullo in 2002 on Burp Publications under the moniker of e-N.E.E.M. Projekt. The group is still active.
In the late seventies and early eighties among the many artists he played with, were Tristan Honsinger and Sean Bergin and with Muzic Circo and Padouk. Also in the late seventies, Ricci started his collaboration with Eugenio Sanna, later documented by two albums on Burp Lo Scorfano Miracolato and Le Sette Premonizioni Ortofrutticole, that were recognized as representing a crucial moment in Italian creative music at that time.
Since the nineties his musical path lead him to encounter a number of international figures among which the heterogenous Florence-based collective Burp Enterprise. In 1996, he joined Mat Pogo and WJ Meatball in Jealousy Party and founded Crap with trumpet player Roy Paci and drummer Jacopo Andreini. He also played with freeform heavy rockers Bron Y Aur and in 200? recorded I Segnali della Ritirata with Eugenio Sanna and Roger Turner.
In 2013 he contributed to two Jealousy Party albums, Mercato Centrale, just out for Burp, and All Yours soon to be released on Audition. Currently, he plays with the Florence-based new music collective Blutwurst and with the circuit bending project Athanoi together with Stefano Bartolini. He plays on Morire Per La Patria the most recent album by the Milanese avant rock unit Fuzz Orchestra.