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Caterina Di Perri

I love photography since I was 4 years old

About Me

I was born and raised in Siena, Italy. I have a degree in Science but I never followed that path. I began to study and play guitar at the age of 12 and very early I switched to jazz music. In 1988 I began to work as a volunteer for the Siena Jazz Association. I was hired in 1997 to work for their secretariat office, dealing with musicians, teachers, students, concerts, lessons, meetings and so on. Photography has been almost always part of my life, I began to take photos when I was six years old and I got my first camera. Over the years, I kept on shooting. I built my own darkroom at home experiencing the joy of developing film and printing. Then the digital era came and I switched to digital cameras. I began to make experiments with cameras and computers and I developed my own vision and style in photography (to be honest I'm still in that mode). In 2005, one of my photos was selected to be on the cover an ECM album (ECM 1933/34 - Stefano Battaglia's Raccolto). It was destined to be the first of a long series. Between then and 2018, my artwork has been featured on 31 ECM albums. Since 2012, ECM has started using my shots of bands or musicians like the Carla Bley trios, the Gary Peacock trio, the Andy Sheppard Quartet, the Avishai Cohen Quartet and many others for their liner photos. While I wait for the right moment to organize my huge catalogue for an exibition, I have published some of my best work for Blurb Books.

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My Jazz Story

I love jazz because it's the expression of the soul and it has the power to heal. I was first exposed to jazz when I was thirteen years old and when I started to play guitar (I don't play anymore though). I met a lot of musicians because I work in a Jazz school and I do photography for ECM records during their recording sessions. The best show I ever attended was probably a 1986 performance by the Keith Jarret trio in Genova, but many others came after that one. I think that being a young passionate musician at that time made that concert unforgettable to me, even to this day. The first jazz record I bought was "Joe Pass and Oscar Peterson �� Salle Pleyel". What I would tell to new listeners is "music nowadays is very easy to find, look for it! You are lucky because you don't need to save money and wait until you have enough to buy a new record, as we had to do in the '80s. I remember that every time I managed to buy a new record I would listen to it for days and weeks, before finding something new. Streaming platforms give you any kind of music you can think of... so get lost in it. However, listen carefully to what you meet on your path without being superficial about it because today it's way to easy to go from record to record in no time". I'm a photographer now and I love to take photos of musicians especially if I'm not noticed, I like to capture the truth, which in Jazz music is a part of the game.

My House Concert Story

I love house concerts for the selected audience and the feeling of sharing something beautiful all together. I attended just two lately but they were both lovely , not only for the music, but also for the atmosphere.