Nico Soffiato, Italian guitarist, composer and educator, currently lives in Brooklyn, NY. After receiving his Master’s degree in philosophy with a thesis on the ontology of music, he moved to Boston. There he attended Berklee College of Music, thanks to a Best Entering Talent Students scholarship, and graduated magna cum laude. At Berklee he studied performance and composition with David Tronzo, Jon Damian, Hal Crook, Ed Tomassi and Jeff Galindo to mention a few. Nico was also selected to be part of an all-guitar ensemble whose members included notable alumni like Bill Frisell, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Mike Stern and Wolfgang Muthspiel.
In New York, aside from being the front man of OST Quartet, he leads the improvised music group Paradigm Refrain. The group has a diverse cast and guests have included: David Tronzo, Darius Jones, Jesse Stacken, Jason Nazary, Nate Wooley, Sunny Kim, Marco Cappelli, Zeno de Rossi, Fraser Campbell, Marco Buccelli, Noah Kaplan, and many others.
Nico co-leads a duo with Grammy-award winning trumpeter Josh Deutsch and they have toured nationally and internationally to promote their records Redshift, Time Gels and Reverse Angle. Together they co-curate the “2x3 series" in New York, which brings together three duos in one night for a mix of separate performances and collaborations. The series has featured many outstanding musicians with established duo projects. These are the musicians who participated, in chronological order: Jonathan Moritz, Carlo Costa, Dave Grollman, Sean Ali, Kirk Knuffke, Jesse Stacken, Landon Knoblock, Elena Camerin, Dan Weiss, Samarth Nagarkar, Dov Manski, Kristin Slipp, Peter Eldridge, Matt Aronoff, Lathan Hardy, Dan Blake, Leo Geonovese, Aaron Shragge, Ben Monder, Pascal Niggenkemper, Thomas Heberer, Mariel Berger, Erika Kapin, Giacomo Merega, Wes Matthews.
He’s also part of Out of Your Head Brooklyn, a collective which includes some of New York’s finest improvisers, like Gerald Cleaver, Tony Malaby and Oscar Noriega, to mention a few.
He co-leads Dogwood with bassist Zach Swanson. Their debut album is out on the Italian label nusica.org.
He’s a sought-after sideman and has played, recorded and toured with many musicians from the New York music scene.