Teen Ettore Buzzini Builds Hope for One of Charlotte’s Oldest Music Scenes

When Ettore Buzzini was 6 years old, his grandfather on his mother’s side, a family that hails from eastern Tennessee, gave the young boy his old iPod and told him he could clear the data and put whatever music he liked on it.

Young Buzzini hadn’t quite fleshed out his tastes in music yet, so rather than delete all his grandpa’s tracks he started listening to what was already on the iPod: lots of bluegrass. He particularly enjoyed one tune from 1957: “Shuckin’ the Corn” by Flatt & Scruggs.

“I think banjo players, many of them who hear Earl Scruggs for the first time, that’s how a lot of them get started because it’s like an electrifying moment,” Buzzini told Queen City Nerve. “It’s just such a cool sound and it’s so captivating. Right then [upon hearing ‘Shuckin’ the Corn’], I was like, ‘I want to play banjo.’”

It took him a few years to convince his mother that he was serious, and at age 9 he received his first banjo on loan from his grandfather. The rest is history … or at least history in the making.

Learning from a local legend

Buzzini, who grew up and still attends high school in Mooresville, learned the ropes from local bluegrass legend John William “Bill” Rippey before he passed away at age 74 in 2022.

Shortly thereafter, Buzzini released his debut album at 14 years old. At that point he was making music as Eddie Ray Buzzini, a moniker he took on for a short time because it was easier to say than Ettore, but he’s since returned to his real name (pronounced et-tor-ray).

Now 17 and a rising senior in high school, Buzzini has become a fixture on the local bluegrass scene, traveling down to Charlotte to play bluegrass jam nights at Smokey Joe’s Cafe & Bar in east Charlotte and taking advantage of his summer vacation to book gigs.

In the fall of 2024, he shocked many in the crowd at the annual FreshGrass Festival in Massachusetts when he won the prestigious Freshgrass Banjo Competition Award, for which participants are asked to perform a traditional song (“Dear Old Dixie”) and an original composition (“Birth of Eros”).

Buzzini wowed the judges with his original song, which showcased the style of playing that he refers to on his business card as “Trad-scendental Bluegrass.”

“There was one [other participant in the competition] who was really good … and I’m nervous about that because he’s older and he’s played for a long time. And if I’m being honest … on a technical level, he probably was playing better and cleaner … but the reason that I won was because of the original song … it was different and it was a totally new thing, really, in bluegrass.”

And that was only the beginning for “Birth of Eros.” Buzzini plans to build upon the track to create a concept album that draws inspiration not only from the master of bluegrass who came before him — figures like Del McCoury whom Buzzini looks up to — but from icons of the classical genre as well.

Buzzini’s ancestral knowledge of music doesn’t only come from the hills of Tennessee but from the hills of Switzerland, where his father hails from and his great-grandmother was a classically trained musician.

Following his win at FreshGrass, Buzzini took began reimagining “Birth of Eros” for his school band, in which he plays trumpet. He worked for months composing each section of the song so the full band could play it live at the school’s annual spring concert earlier this year. Buzzini was front and center as conductor.

Helping preserve bluegrass in Charlotte

While he’s currently working in the studio on a traditional bluegrass album with his backing band — a quartet that comprises a fiddle, guitar and bass supporting his banjo, Buzzini is also looking to build on “Birth of Eros” to create a hybrid bluegrass-classical album with leitmotifs inspired by Wagnerian operas.

He aims to release the traditional album before the end of the year and the concept album next fall, all while juggling his senior year of high school and continuing to support Charlotte’s underground bluegrass scene.

“It would be a big task … but I really would like to [help build] a big bluegrass presence in Charlotte, because this is one of the places where it came from originally,” Buzzini said. “I’ve found that people in Charlotte, all the musicians and stuff, they really want something to take off. That’s how I feel … Everybody really wants something to come out because there’s a lot of great music happening, it’s just not center stage.”

With all the runway one could ask for in a promising career, Buzzini could be the one to bring bluegrass back to Charlotte’s center stage.

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