Joe T. Vannelli

Italy's dance music scene has consistently proved to be amongst the most vibrant in Europe and a lot of that has been pinned down to one man: Joe T. Vannelli. Starting off in the business as a radio host during the late '70s, Vannelli (also known as JTV) has since grown into one of the world's top house DJs and producers. His CV includes performances at a plethora of legendary house venues, such as Ministry of Sound, Heaven, and Renaissance in the U.K. He began working in the recording studio during the mid-'80s and eventually ended up collaborating with a number of big names, remixing tracks for, amongst others, Bobby Brown and Mark Morrison. By the close of the 1980s, Vannelli had set up the record labels Dream Beat, DBX, Rush, and MWC. By far the most successful of those was DBX, which launched the career of Robert Miles — one of the most celebrated Italian musicians of the 1990s, with such massive hits as "Children" and "One on One" to his name. At the same time, Vannelli was also busy serving up his own works, of which the 1995 single "Sweetest Day of May" (released under the moniker Joe T. Vannelli Project) and the 1999 compilation album ICU Sessions, Vol. 4 are amongst the best known.