About
Gabriele di Franco
Composer, writer, guitarist. Based in Brussels.
About
Composer, writer, guitarist. Based in Brussels.
Gabriele di Franco is a Belgian-Italian composer, writer and guitarist. His music is rooted in jazz and driven by storytelling: his pieces unfold like stories, with their characters, their turns and their silences. His writing draws equally on classical orchestration, contemporary grooves and folk-inspired melody.
As composer and conductor he has worked with jazz orchestras across Europe, among them the Subway Jazz Orchestra Cologne, the FETE Big Band in Berlin and Q-Some Big Band, and in 2026 he wrote Drops and Sand for the Orchestre National de Jazz (Académie de Composition). His album The Value of Choices (Challenge Records, 2026), eight pieces for his own jazz orchestra, has been reviewed and broadcast in six countries.
The same love for stories took him to music theatre and film. His music theatre piece LULELA (LOD muziektheater) became an award-winning book, and after a postgraduate in film and animation music at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels he has scored short films and animation.
As a guitarist he plays in duo with pianist Francesco Negro (Synolon, Cantabile), leads his new quintet Beautiful Useless Songs, and plays as a sideman in several projects.
He studied composition at the Royal Conservatory of Brussels with Kris Defoort, and teaches composition, guitar and theory at the Academie Wilrijk in Antwerp.
Full biography (PDF)The Value of Choicesdi Franco // NegroBeautiful Useless Songs
113 words, ready to copy for programmes, festivals and press.
Gabriele di Franco is a Belgian-Italian composer, writer and guitarist based in Brussels. His music is rooted in jazz and driven by storytelling, drawing on classical orchestration and folk-inspired melody. He has written for jazz orchestras across Europe, among them the Subway Jazz Orchestra Cologne and the Orchestre National de Jazz, and his album The Value of Choices (Challenge Records, 2026) has been widely reviewed in Europe and the United States. His work has been awarded by the Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and at competitions in Italy, Finland and Japan. He also writes for music theatre and film, and as a guitarist he is active both as a leader and as a sideman.
Words are part of how I compose. LULELA started as a music theatre piece with a narrator, where the audience chooses where the story goes; its text became a book, published by Albatros il Filo in 2021, which received four literary awards.
Free to use for press and programmes, with the photographer’s credit. High resolution, original colours.
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