The music of Ilaria Capalbo does not merely unfold. It breathes and pulses.
Born and raised on the volcanic grounds of Naples, Italy and currently living on the icy coast of Stockholm, Sweden, Capalbo is a composer and musician. Double and electric bass, synths and cello all add up to her sound palette. Her quintet, active since 2020, is one of her most creative outputs to date. Lira (SE) has defined Ilaria's playing as “strong, visionary, architectonic” and All About Jazz (USA) has praised her music as “a delight [which] bolsters the faith in the future of contemporary jazz”.
Known for moving seamlessly across genres, Ilaria maintains a close relationship with her background. Classically trained, she folds in elements of traditional orchestration, rock and indie music, modern jazz arranging as well as free jazz in her composition process, using often unconventional techniques to build bridges between extremely different landscapes.
Capalbo’s music does not chase any trends. Rather, it invests in intensity and emotional reach. It is written with each one of her bandmates in mind as an equally important voice. Her band, an established collective of the most fierce improvisers on the Swedish scene, makes organic music that unfolds according to its own logic rather than being a platform for individual virtuosism. Like life itself, it moves from near-stillness to raging chaos. Nothing in Ilaria's compositions is unintentional: from carefully written lines to the use of effects, everything fulfills a purpose. Lira (SE) has defined her playing as “strong, visionary, architectonic” and All About Jazz (USA) has praised her music as “a delight [which] bolsters the faith in the future of jazz”.
Capalbo’s debut album Karthago (2022) was composed during the pandemic. It laid the foundation for a practice of methodical, journal-like composition. A meditation on loss and reconstruction, the album’s architecture is built on the interaction of two, five or seven musicians. In the emphatic opening track, Belóved, the sense of urgency that is typical of new relations is portrayed through chiseled lines for brass and woodwinds. In the title track Karthago, the listener witnesses the cataclysmic unfolding of fate. Audience and press responded enthusiastically to the album’s layered complexity and the music has since been performed on some of Europe’s most prestigious venues and festivals, lastly appearing in the official selection for the European Showcases at jazzahead! in April 2025 where it was performed for a full-seated Schlachthof. Capalbo has continued to forge a distinct path through the possibilities of contemporary jazz, steadily collaborating with artists from the world of jazz, classical music, pop, and avant-garde.
With an education in double bass and composition at the Conservatory of Salerno, Italy and Stockholm’s Kungliga Musikhögskolan as well as a degree in Visual Arts from Accademia di Belle Arti in Napoli Capalbo relies on live performance more as means of compositional development, as if music on stage was a “living organism.” After deepening her studies in Sound Art at Stockholm’s prestigious arts university Konstfack she has started to explore the language of electronic music and now weaves a synesthetic language into her compositions.
Capalbo’s music moves through extremes: from silence to saturation, from minimalist textures to near-orchestral density. It is less a showcase of virtuosity than a vessel for a deeper, more universal message. Sound and form, in her world, are sculpted until they becomes something else entirely: a kind of presence, alive with tension and release and the possibility of becoming. Although a reference to her influences is evident in her production, Capalbo’s music seem to address the larger question of what it means to engage in the act of creation as a human being in this day and age. Even though it often stems from personal experience, her work is far from autobiographical. It is devotional.
Her composition resume extends to contemporary dance, film and theatre. A collaborator of renown Swedish contemporary dance company Cullberg and choreographer Freddy Houndekindo, she has premiered commissioned work at multidisciplinary festivals such as EarEye Festival in Malmö and Explorations of Now in Stockholm.
In 2025 she completed the recording of her second album entitled The Brightest Sun, a work that originates from the radical reorientation of new motherhood. If Karthago was shaped by ashes, the new chapter is shaped by water: fluid and luminous. Her most personal work to date, The Brightest Sun was released on June 12, 2026.
