Dutch pianist Mike del Ferro (Amsterdam 23 august 1965) is a composer, pianist and arranger who writes and performs in several musical genres.He has travelled the world extensively, searching for collaborations with musicians from cultures quite different to his own.
Mike's father was opera singer Leonard del Ferro (1921-1992), who sang and recorded with Maria Callas and Leonard Bernstein, and from the very start his childhood was thus filled with music..A native of Amsterdam, he started his career studying classical piano at the age of nine and after falling in love with jazz he pursued his studies on Jazz and received a Masters of Music in Contemporary Music at the Amsterdam Conservatory.
In 1989 he won First Prize at the Rotterdam Jazz Piano Competition, the Soloist Prize at the Europe Jazz Contest in Brussels, and First Prize at the Karlovy Vary Jazz contest and from 1993-1996 studied composition and arrangements with Bob Brookmeyer at the Musikhochschule in Cologne, Germany. In 1995 Mike was appointed on the faculty of the Royal Conservatory in Gent, Belgium where he taught jazz piano until 1997. He has collaborated with musicians such as Toots Thielemans, Branford Marsalis, Jack DeJohnette, Randy Brecker, Oscar Castro Neves, Deborah Brown, Erik Truffaz, Jorge Rossy, Scott Hamilton, Richard Galliano, Thijs van Leer (Focus), Harold Land, Jan Akkerman, Norma Winstone, Benny Bailey, Candy Dulfer, Trijntje Oosterhuis and Niladri Kumar.