Riccardo Oliva is one of those modern bass players who feels less like a specialist and more like a musical system… a player, composer, producer and thinker whose instincts move freely between groove, harmony, texture and technology. Born in Palermo and now based in Milan, Riccardo’s path to the bass began unusually wide… first as a drummer, then through piano, and eventually to electric bass as the instrument that best translated what he was already hearing (but he was very young when this happened). Rooted in jazz-fusion but fluent in electronic music, rock and contemporary composition, his playing reflects a generation raised on both Weather Report and YouTube… equal parts lineage and restless curiosity. Many listeners first encountered Riccardo through his work with the ever-hot and exciting guitarist, Matteo Mancuso, where his six-string bass doesn’t just support the music, it actively converses with it… shaping harmony, filling space and making this wild trio sound far larger than it should. This conversation was recorded this past summer during the Montreal International Jazz Festival