Frank Salis

Frank Salis is a prodigy. When he was 8 years old, Frank Salis received the present of a piano with an instruction book on learning how to play it. The first thing he did was to put aside the piano playing method book and begin to play intuitively. Not long thereafter he went to a concert where a blues pianist was playing ; there and then he decided that that was exactly what he wanted to do too. Just two years later he started doing his own concerts and has never stopped since. In the first ten years he played with several artists from the Blues panorama, including Bobby Watson, Alvin Little Pink Anderson, Willie Murphy, Eric St. Michaels, Terry Evans, Joe Colombo and Bat Battiston. When he was 20 he set about studying musical composition and jazz arrangements. It was around then that he played a real Hammond for the first time and it was love at first "hearing"! From then on he has been specializing more and more in playing this fantastic instrument. In 2009 he formed the band, in his own name, Frank Salis H3O along with his age-old friend and drum player, Rocco Lombardi and the saxophonist Marco Nevano. He rapidly moved from being a regional artist to one who had access to the Swiss market, thanks to the Suisse Jazz Diagonales festival whose aim is precisely that of creating a network of international contacts. Immediately after the Suisse Jazz Diagonales festival he was invited to represent Switzerland in Ecuador during the 'Festival Internazionale Jazz In Situ' festival. Following this he was then asked to open the Festival Cully Jazz who subsequently came to Germany, Tunisia, the Czech Republic, Madagascar, Azerbaijan and Italy. He has recently had the honour of playing with LaVelle, Udo Lindenberg and Sandro Schneebeli. Over the last few years Frank has produced three records with Band H3O: Mad Dog, Live a Vevey and Stonebreaker.

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