What they said

Claudio Passavanti is Sunlightsquare, a pianist, producer and bandleader who fuses Latin, jazz, soul and house. His records feature Steve Gadd, Will Lee and top musicians from Havana. "I Believe In Miracles" sold more than 5,000 seven-inch copies, BBC Music called Britannia Shing-A-Ling "a triumph", and his music opens the film Cuban Fury. He also founded Doctor Mix.

Claudio Passavanti is a Rome-born pianist, producer and bandleader. He records as Sunlightsquare and runs the London label Sunlightsquare Records. He trained at the Grove School of Music in Los Angeles and made his debut album with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl. He then spent the 1990s as a session keyboardist and producer for Zucchero, Lucio Dalla and Pino Daniele, and won the Best Performance award at the 1998 Sanremo Festival with the duo Eramo & Passavanti. In London he launched Sunlightsquare with Steve Gadd and Will Lee on Urban Sessions. In Havana he recorded Havana Central, whose "I Believe In Miracles" sold more than 5,000 seven-inch copies across three pressings with support from Gilles Peterson, Louie Vega and Tony Humphries. He cut Britannia Shing-A-Ling live with a 25-piece band, and BBC Music called it "a triumph". His music is the main title of the film Cuban Fury. He also founded Doctor Mix.

Claudio Passavanti is a pianist, producer, arranger and bandleader who has spent more than three decades moving between jazz, Latin, soul and dance music. To club and radio audiences he is Sunlightsquare, the London collective and record label behind the salsa hit "I Believe In Miracles" and the big-band album Britannia Shing-A-Ling, which BBC Music called "a triumph". To a much larger audience online he is Doctor Mix.

Born in Rome, he began playing keyboards as a small child. He studied classical piano from the age of nine and jazz piano at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio as a teenager, and he was working as a studio programmer while still at school. Around the age of twenty he moved to Los Angeles to study at the Grove School of Music. He played the city's jazz clubs and jammed with musicians from the GRP circle. Those connections led to his debut album, After Hours Ritual, recorded with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl of Chick Corea's Elektric Band for Rossodisera, Sony Music's Italian label.

Back in Italy in the 1990s, he became a first-call session keyboardist, producer and conductor. He worked with Zucchero, Lucio Dalla, Pino Daniele, Alex Britti and Niccolò Fabi, played the Italian leg of a Bryan Adams tour, and played in the house band of Ottavo Nano, RAI's Saturday-night show. With singer Barbara Eramo he formed the duo Eramo & Passavanti, which won the award for Best Performance at the 1998 Festival di Sanremo with "Senza Confini". In 1999 he arranged and produced the Milonga film score for Academy Award-winning composer Luis Bacalov.

After moving to London, he worked as an in-house producer and remixer at Almighty Records. He then founded Sunlightsquare Records and the Sunlightsquare collective. The debut album, Urban Sessions, paired drummer Steve Gadd and bassist Will Lee with vocalists Joy Malcolm, Sharlene Hector and Z-Star. Modern Drummer gave it 9/10 and Drummer magazine made it CD of the Month. Urban Latin Soul followed, launched with a sell-out show at the Jazz Café. At Radio Rebelde's historic Studio 4 in Havana, he recorded Havana Central with the Sunlightsquare Latin Combo. Its salsa version of the Jackson Sisters' "I Believe In Miracles" sold more than 5,000 seven-inch copies across three pressings, with support from Gilles Peterson, Louie Vega, Jazzie B, Tony Humphries and Joey Negro. Britannia Shing-A-Ling was recorded live at Miloco Studios by a 25-piece band with no editing.

More releases kept the label moving: the album King Yoruba and the singles "Heart's Desire", "Super People", "Oyelo" and "Dance With You" with Omar. Claudio remixed Gilles Peterson's Havana Cultura Band for Brownswood Recordings and released music on Osunlade's Yoruba Soul. He also presented the Sunlightsquare Takeover on Jazz FM and DJed at Ronnie Scott's and at the Winter Music Conference in Miami. His track "Breakin' Down (Sugar Samba) – Dale Ma!" became the main title of the StudioCanal/Film4 comedy Cuban Fury.

Alongside the label, he founded Doctor Mix, one of the first online mixing, mastering and production services. He later started the Doctor Mix YouTube channel, where he demonstrates synthesizers and production techniques; it now has more than 800,000 subscribers. He still writes, produces and performs as Sunlightsquare.