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Born in 1963 in Milan, Luca Avanzi has studied with the renowned performers Giacomo Calderoni, Mario Molino, Ruggero Laganà , and Giuseppe Garbarino. He continued his studies later with Maurice Bourgue and Alberto Grazzi. Avanzi won the Stresa performance competition in 1979, the Cesena competition in 1982, the Manta compeitiion in 1985, The Pomeriggi Musicali Orchestra competition in 1987, Venice in 1995, and Pavia in 1996.

He has performed the majority of the solo oboe repertoire. He debuted with the RAI Milano orchestra in 1982, performing the Richard Strauss oboe concerto. In 1995 he recorded his first CD with Stradivarius, featuring oboe concertos from the 18th Century. His second CD, a recording of his premiere in Maderna, was released in 2007 on the same label. He’s collaborated with German oboist Hansjà Schellenberger, Austrian bassoonist Milan Turkovi, Antonio Ballista, conductor Ottavio Dantone, pianist Carlo Balzaretti, and Carlo Boccadoro, and ensembles like the Netherlands’s Nieuw Ensemble, the Divertimento Ensemble, Novecento e oltre, Nuove Sincronie, Musica Rara, Musica Insieme of Cremona, and Novurgia. He’s appeared several times on TV, and was once featured in a video about the composer Luca Francesconi. He recorded a duet with oboist Antonio Ballista, and another with the harpist Elena Gorna.

He often performs solo concerts with repertoire ranging from the baroque to contemporary music. Numerous composers have written works for him, including Niccolò Castiglioni, Sandro Gorli, Davide Anzaghi, Daniel D’Adamo, and Federico Gardella. He recently premiered Elliott Carter’s “Oboe sommerso” at the Biennale Music Festival in Venice, “Plot in Fiction” by Luca Francesconi, and H.W. Henze’s double oboe concerto.

He’s played first oboe for orchestra at La Scala, the European Community Youth Orchestra, the RAI National Orchestra, the Toscanini Orchestra of Parma, Pomeriggi Musicali in Milan, and Orchestra Angelicum in Milan.

He has performed with many of the great maestros, including Claudio Abbado, Leonard Bernstein, Lorin Maazel, Seiji Ozawa, Daniel Barenboim, and Antal Dorà¡ti. Avanzi plays both classical and baroque oboe, and has been published several times in MUSICA magazine. He’s served as principal oboe of the Divertimento Ensemble since 2000 and as an oboe instructor at the Conservatory of Milan.