Rome, Los Angeles, Sanremo, London, Havana and back. How a session pianist built a band, a studio and a label.
Claudio Passavanti was born in Rome and began playing keyboards as a small child. He studied classical piano from nine and jazz piano at the Scuola Popolare di Musica di Testaccio, and worked as a studio programmer while still at school. Around twenty he went to Los Angeles to study at the Grove School of Music and played the city's jazz clubs. That led to his debut album, After Hours Ritual, with John Patitucci and Dave Weckl.
Back in Italy he became a first-call session keyboardist, producer and conductor, working with Zucchero, Lucio Dalla, Pino Daniele, Alex Britti and Niccolò Fabi. He played the Italian leg of a Bryan Adams tour and sat in the house band of Ottavo Nano on RAI. With singer Barbara Eramo he formed Eramo & Passavanti, and their song Senza confini won Best Performance at the 1998 Festival di Sanremo. In 1999 he arranged and produced Luis Bacalov's Milonga film score.
In London he worked as an in-house producer and remixer at Almighty Records, then gathered the musicians who became Sunlightsquare. Urban Sessions, the label's first release in 2006, paired Steve Gadd and Will Lee with the voices of Sharlene Hector, Joy Malcolm and Z-Star. The band played the Vibe Bar, The Garage and the Jazz Café, the label signed trumpeter Quentin Collins, and Urban Latin Soul brought salsa into the sound, launched with a sold-out Jazz Café show.
Claudio took the Latin side of the band to Cuba. At Studio 4 of Radio Rebelde in Havana he recorded Havana Central with Cuban players billed as the Sunlightsquare Latin Combo, and its salsa cover of I Believe In Miracles became the label's best-selling 7-inch. A 10-piece band toured Germany and Italy. The Havana thread kept running: Giovanni Imparato's Bomba Cuba at the same studio, then the batá ensemble Abbilona at the ICRT studios, released as Masters Of Batá.
Then came the big band. Claudio spent six months rearranging favourite 60s and 70s records around the clave, took 25 musicians into Miloco Studios and recorded Britannia Shing-A-Ling live, with only the strings overdubbed. BBC Music called it "a triumph". Land Of 1000 Dances and O Mi Shango came out on 7-inch, Heart's Desire followed on 12-inch, and in 2012 Claudio presented the Sunlightsquare Takeover on Jazz FM.
A run of 12-inches, Ochosi, Afro Boogie Super Hombre and Breakin' Down, the main title of the film Cuban Fury, led to King Yoruba, recorded between Havana and London and released in 2014. The singles kept coming. Super People became the most-streamed Sunlightsquare track, Osunlade's Yoruba Records released Celebration Of Oggun, and Oyelo, Above The Sun, Hanging Tough and Dance With You with Omar followed. On stage, the live DJ set took over.
In 2020, ten years on, I Believe In Miracles returned on red and then translucent yellow vinyl, and both sold out. Oyelo kept travelling after Atjazz remixed it, with licensed remixes on MoBlack, Cabeau, Open Bar and Silverprod. A band of up to fourteen reunited for the Dream Gig in 2022, with Omar as guest. Now two new 7-inches are in production for 2026: a green I Believe In Miracles and SUN7007, Super People with its instrumental on the flip.
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.
45 moments, 1985–2026
Musicians who have played in the Sunlightsquare bands, from the 2005 trio to the 25-piece that recorded Britannia Shing-A-Ling.