12.08.2026 | Artist
U.T. Gandhi, the Italian drummer and percussionist whose playing combined sensitivity, openness and an instinctive sense of colour, has died. Born Umberto Trombetta, he was a self-taught musician who came to jazz in the late 1970s and became one of the distinctive voices of the Italian scene. Over a career spanning several decades, he worked with renowned international artists including Enrico Rava, Richard Galliano, Gianluigi Trovesi, Louis Sclavis, Tony Scott, Jack Walrath and Stefano Bollani. His eight years with Rava’s Electric Five were particularly important, taking him on tours across Italy, Europe, Canada and Japan, and establishing him as a drummer capable of moving freely between jazz, improvisation and contemporary music.
A close acquaintance of producer Manfred Eicher and engineer Stefano Amerio (the three of them appear in the photograph on the right, taken in 2003 during the session for Rava’s album Easy Living) since the early 2000s, his recorded collaboration with ECM began with Dino Saluzzi’s Juan Condori (2006), where Eicher brought Gandhi into the Saluzzi ensemble, with which he’d go on to tour extensively. Saluzzi himself praised Gandhi as “one of the best,” singling out his openness and sensitivity – qualities Eicher valued deeply throughout the various partnerships with the drummer. Gandhi also appeared on Vassilis Tsabropoulos and 
Anja Lechner’s Melos (2008), where his restrained percussion became part of the album’s spacious, chamber-like sound. His playing was never about display, but about patience, shading and flow—qualities that remain present in these recordings as well as in his forthcoming ECM recording Ritornare, as part of the Atlantico quintet with Enzo Favata.
Dino Saluzzi, Felix Saluzzi, Anja Lechner, John Surman, Palle Mkkelborg, Ares Tavolazzi, U.T. Gandhi (24.07.2010)
Photos 1-2 © Hossam Ezzat, 3-4 © Luca D’Agostino
