Fab Merrett (aka Fabio Mereghetti, born in Milan in 1957) is a creative director and keyboard player, arranger, composer who loves playing music in a smooth jazz style.
When he was very young Fabio began studying the piano with classical studies, but he soon left for other musical instruments. His great passion for American soul and black music finally brings him back to the black and white keys and started to study jazz at the Milan Jazz Civic School, with several Italian jazz masters and following numerous master’s programs with famous European and American pianists.
His activities and his characteristics led him to play as a pianist and keyboard player in different musical projects and contexts, as a leader or freelance, taking concerts in Italy and Europe with jazz big band and pop, jazz, soul and funky groups.
He loves to play all kind of music that reaches his heart, filtering it through the soul, funky and jazz elements he has assimilated during his career. Thanks to this and to his passion for “smooth jazz” he gives life to the musical project of “Cherry Pickers”, the smooth jazz band he founded and that he still leads, with the glamorous singer Dagmar Segbers.
“Pickin’Up The Cherries” is the album that Fabio recorded with Cherry Pickers in 2018, from whom many songs are still broadcasted by many smooth jazz radios.
He carries around and promotes his concept of “jazzin ‘everything”: re-propose songs from any musical genre and original compositions in refined and creative “smooth” arrangements. With this in mind in 2022 he releases the album “Golden Smooth Jazz Oldies”, a series of elegant smooth jazz renditions of songs of the ’60s, arranged and developed with the guitarist Al Warren. The album revisits both popular international hits and somewhat forgotten tunes that today’s audience can rediscover in these versions by Fab Merrett.
In addition to having collaborated as a graphic artist and illustrator for many advertising agencies and record companies, he has been working permanently as creative director and strategic consultant for Warner Bros. Entertainment from 1979 to 2013 so that he has always lived the musical world even “from the inside”. Fabio created hundreds of record jackets for the most famous Italian and international artists. Now, among those one, he can put his cover too!
I was 4 years old and on a small toy piano that my parents had given me, I “accompanied” the Sanremo festival on TV. With the size of a briefcase, it was a small blue wooden piano, but a grand piano. The black keys were missing, but they were drawn on white keys. I really liked playing it and maybe I got some notes right, my parents were surprised and happy. Me too. I loved drawing very much, like all children, and I did it everywhere, spending whole days at it without stopping. Then I really couldn’t imagine that in my life I would be able to combine these two passions: working as a creative for the world of music and entertainment and then playing around and creating the music I love most… Oh yes, yes, I’m a very lucky guy!
