Bio

Franco Pinna started his musical career in 1988 in his native Tucuman, Argentina where he performed and recorded with some of the most distinguished folklore musicians of the country, such as Raul Carnota, Lucho Hoyos, Leopoldo Deza, and Popi Quintero.

In January of 1998 Franco moved to Boston to enter the Berklee College of Music where he obtained the «Outstanding Musicianship» scholarship and graduated Magna Cum Laude in 2000 under the Professional Music Diploma program. During his two years tenure at this institution he studied with excellent teachers that have extensive resumes in the jazz and world music scene such as Jamey Haddad, Casey Scheuerell, Bill Pierce, Marcelo Pelleteri, David Dicenso, Jon Hazilla and Skip Hadden.

Pinna is a founder member of New York-based group "Los Changos" that performs original music based on Argentinean rhythms. The drummer has dedicated a big part of his life to study all the different rhythms from the South American folklore creating a unique way of interpret them incorporating some traditional percussion instruments in to the drum set and developing his own style based on the folkloric percussion techniques.

In the US, Franco has performed and recorded a wide variety of rhythms with many artists such as Julio Santillan, Marta Gomez, Fernando Huergo, Fernando Isella y Los Makanudos, Sandra Mihanovich, Santiago Greco, Daniele Camarda , Manuel Santos, Katie Viqueira, Danilo Perez, Nando Michelin, Pablo Ablanedo, Bonnie Raitt, Livingston Taylor, Bruce Barth, Oscar Stagnaro,Chris Cheek, Jeff Ballard, Oscar Feldman, Emilio Solla, Emilio Teubal, Marta Topferova, Pablo Aslan, Claudio Ragazzi, Hiroya Tsukamoto among others.

As a sideman, Franco has recorded more than 30 CDs, some of them released by prestigious labels such as Fresh Sound, Chesky Records, BigSur Records and Putumayo.