Emanuele Maniscalco
Born in Brescia in 1983, and largely self-taught, Emanuele Maniscalco took up piano at eight and drums at twelve. While still in his teens he impressed Enrico Rava at a gig in Siena, was drafted into the trumpeter’s workshop band, and ended up drumming regularly with Enrico between 2004 and 2007. He has also played extensively with Stefano Battaglia and occasionally with other leading figures of the new Italian jazz scene, such as Stefano Bollani, Gianluca Petrella, and Giovanni Guidi (he played on Guidi’s critically-heralded trio album “Tomorrow Never Knows”). In recent years he has recommitted himself to the piano and today splits his time between the two instruments. Maniscalco’s current projects include a new duo with US bassist Thomas Morgan. His albums as a leader on other labels include “From Time To Time – The Music of Paul Motian” for El Gallo Rojo Records.

Guitarist Roberto Pianca,
whose palette, in Third Reel, embraces thick post-Hendrix distortion as well as delicate Jim Hall filigree, was born in 1984. He studied at the Scuola di Musica Moderna in Lugano and the Amsterdam Conservatory and privately in New York with saxophonist John O'Gallagher and pianist Russ Lossing. Active in jazz, contemporary classical, folk and rock contexts he has played and worked with a wide variety of artists including Joey Baron, Savina Yannatou, Sienna Dahlen, Yuri Goloubev, Jake Saslow, Colin Stranahan, Ben Syversen, Flin Van Hemmen, Dan Kinzelman, Stefano Senni, Otto Tausk, Wiek Hijmans, Tim Brady, Seth Josel and many others.

Nicolas Masson,
born 1972, dived into improvised music at the deep end, at 20 encountering Cecil Taylor and J. R. Mitchell in New York and subsequently studying with Frank Lowe and Makanda Ken McIntyre. “It gave me insights into the relationship of free playing and the jazz tradition that might otherwise have been difficult to access as a European.” Back in Geneva he studied at the Conservatoire Populaire de Musique and took masterclasses with Lee Konitz, Dave Douglas and Misha Mengelberg. Most of his own bands have been international in line-up and he made his recording debut as a leader with his New York quartet with Russ Johnson, Eivind Opsvik and Mark Ferber. Later incarnations of the quartet featured Gerald Cleaver and Ted Poor. His band Parallels with Colin Vallon, Patrice Moret and Lionel Friedli recorded for Clean Feed in 2009, and the following year, he assembled a new band with Ben Monder, Patrice Moret and Ted Poor. A leading figure on the Swiss new jazz scene, Masson has worked with a broad international cast of musicians including Kenny Wheeler, Josh Roseman, Kris Davis, Otomo Yoshihide, Tom Arthurs, Scott DuBois and many more. Masson’s bold and resolute tenor sax variously fronts Third Reel’s sound, hews closely to the guitar lines or agitates inside the group texture. “In this group you can take chances and know that you can trust your colleagues to support you and develop the musical ideas that arise.”