Ersilia Prosperi was born in Rome in 1977. She attended guitar and jazz composition courses at the Scuola Popolare di musica Vicor Jara with Sicilian guitarist Giuseppe Salerno. She later migrated to the Scuola Popolare di Musica Testaccio where she began to study the trumpet with Silverio Cortesi. Shortly after, Ersilia undertook the study of the classic trumpet at the conservatoire of music Morlacchi, in Perugia, with Massimo Bartoletti. During the same period she began playing with the Titubanda, the renown open street band and political-poetic collective. This experience takes Ersilia to play in countless Italian and international festivals, attending political rallies alongside sister bands such as Banda Roncati from Bologna, the Ottoni a Scoppio from Milan and the Hungry March Band from New York. Thanks to these experiences, she could blend in with the musicians of the Bolognese avant garde scene (born from the Laboratorio di Musica & Immagine del Dams) Paolo Angeli, Fastilio, Olivia Bignardi and Uccellacci, characterized by a transversal compositional style that is disruptive of the usual barriers between musical genres.
In the same period, she falls in love with the music of Amy Denio and The Tiptons Sax Quartet, with whom, in the following years she began to collaborate with. Overwhelmed by the Bolognese energy, together with Alberto Sarcina, they founded the band Zazie, a brass and percussion quartet, in which she began to find her ways into composing the music for the quintet (Federico Fabrizi, Sabrina Coda, Leo Saracino). In 2004, after obtaining a degree in Sociology (Socio-anthropological address), she left the classical conservatoire of music to dedicate herself to the study of the trumpet technique, going to Cuba in the city of Camagüey, where she studied with Gustavo Barrera, renowned trumpet instructor. In this period she participated to the peñas in La Casa de la Trova in Camagüey directed by the flautist Orlando Rogelio Beltrán Brunett. This experience allowed Ersilia to immerse herself into the world of Cuban musical tradition.
With the accordionist Stefania Nanni, she left Cuba to reach the region of Chiapas (Mexico) for a short period of time where she played for the autonomous Zapatista community of Vicente Guerrero, (Caracol de Morelia). Back to Italy, she resumed her academic studies and graduated in jazz at the L. Refice of Frosinone conservatoire of music directed by Ettore Fioravanti and in 2005 she founded the Tzacatal group with Stefania Nanni (Giorgia Capovivo, Sabrina Coda, Davide Saponaro, Francesco Pitarra, Eugenia Barone), which participates in countless national and international festivals including Acoustics Unplugged, Musica in Campo, Isole che parlano, Terre Sonore, Acustico Maggio, Radicazioni, Art ‘ Zimut Festival (Fr) and recorded the album È tutto gratis.
Over the years she participated in countless of different projects including the Ned project, directed by Paolo Sinigaglia and Leonardo Milani, playing with Pasquale Innarella, Errico De Fabritiis, Francesco Lo Cascio and many other musicians of the contemporary improvisation scene, for whom she recorded the discs Inediti with Angelo Olivieri and Marco Ariano, Il Giardino di Ned and DonNed. During the same period she recorded the album Daily Visions by Roberto Fega, an eclectic electronic composer of the Roman underground scene. She is an integral part of the Son de Roma group, with the Colombian guitarist Francisco Echeverri and the Mexican singer Maria Rosa Vasquez Torres, with whom she records the album Sin perder la poesia.
She is the guest of many records and takes part in the recordings of numerous soundtracks including Il Re muore by Eugene Ionesco for the Italian national broadcaster Rai Radio 3 Suite (music by Claudio Melilli), MAMMA + MAMMA directed by Karol di Tommaso and Lo sguardo perduto by the mexican director Aideè Montejo. She is guest of the duo Adriano Lanzi-Omar Sodano (prod. Phaust) on the album La vita perfetta, she collaborates with the band Ardecore (Giampaolo Felici, Luca Venitucci, Manlio Maresca and ZU) for which she records the two albums Chimera and San Cadoco, and with which she later participated in the Loano Festival for the live recording of a disc of unpublished songs by Luigi Tenco playing with Antonella Ruggiero, Faraualla, Elena Ledda and Peppe Voltarelli.
In 2014 she founded the OU project. Within the OU project she recorded two albums, for which she composed and arranged all the tracks; they are Pisces Crisis (2014) and Scrambled! (2015). Both albums have been recorded by Floyd Reitsma in Stone Grossard’s prestigious Studio Litho (Pearl jam), produced in Seattle by Amy Denio, mastered by Chris Hanzsek (Nirvana) and released on US labels Spoot Music and Public Eyesore. With OU (Martina Fadda, Sabrina Coda, Claudio Mosconi, Cristiano De Fabritiis, Luca Venitucci, Andrea Pesce, Cristina Pecorario) she walks on the stages and radio stations of the American west coast scene during two long tours that led her to introduce her music to a number of international festival such as the Earshot jazz Festival (Seattle, WA), The Joshua Tree Music Festival (Los Angeles, CA) and the UC Botanical Garden Berkeley Summer Concerts (Berkeley, CA), Trinidad, Petaluma, Portland and at the jazz festival of the Blue Whale in Los Angeles with guest the flautist Emily Hay.
In Europe, Ou presents the album in a European tour in formation with Amy Denio at the Hildesheim Folk’nFusion Festival in Germany, at the opening of the Italian tour of the Calibro 35, Trento Jazz Festival, Urbino Jazz Festival, Lucca Jazz Festival, Fano Jazz Festival and at the Villa Ada Incontra il Mondo – international music festival.
While in the United States she collaborated with the Californian musician Monique Mizrahi (Honeybird) with whom she participated to a series of concerts played in New York in a quintet formation with, amongst others, the composer Jessica Lurie on the saxophone.
Back from the United States in 2016 Ersilia met the Italian-Spanish singer-songwriter Diana Tejera, with whom she formed the duo EdMondo and recorded the album OOPS! The album has been recorded again in Seattle and produced by Amy Denio. The album is presented in New York, Berlin, Weimar, Binghamton University, Dante Alighieri Institute in Seattle and all around Italy.
The network created within the American musical scene gives rise to new collaboration, including the one with the Afro-American singer-songwriter Meklit Hadero from San Francisco. As a result, Ersilia played as a guest on Meklit’s European tour to present the album We are alive, with guest the legend of funk, the saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis – which led her to play at the Southbank Centre in London, at the Norwich Folk Festival and at the world renown Moods in Zurich.
In Rome her work continues to produce music in the improvisational scene by participating to the Iato Orchestra. This is an ensemble of 40 improvisers that brings together the main exponents of the contemporary Roman scene, including Luca Venitucci, Luca Tilli, Cristiano De Fabritiis, Fabrizio Spera, Roberto Bellatalla, Sebi Tramontana, Mike Cooper and Eleonora Bruni, in concerts and live records directed by Alvin Curran, Giancarlo Schiaffini and Amy Denio.
In 2016, the collaboration with the Dutch composer Merel Van Dijk takes to the presentation of the Third album of the American project Merel & Tony. In 2017 she founded the Dolores Picasso quartet with Eleonora Betti, Diana Tejera and Giorgia Frisardi and in 2018 the Minimum Queer Orchestra with the accordionist Giorgia Frisardi and the electronic composer Chiara De Montis.
With the baritonist composer and sax player Daniela Diurisi, they founded the Mirrors project. For the Mirrors project Ersilia composed the music for the live soundtrack of Maya Deren’s short films – the pioneer of experimental American cinema. This project gives rise to the collaboration with the performer Clio Evans and the director Agostino Aresu. During the same year the collaboration with Lady Maru & Erzulie brings the release of the Makumba Tropicale EP.
In 2018, Ersilia moved to Madrid where she joined the Orquesta en Transito directed by the composer and saxophonist Chefa Alonzo and the Orquesta Libre project (Nueva Escuela Municipal de Música y Danza María Dolores Pradera) directed by Chefa Alonzo. Soon after she arrived she founded the Fanfarria TransFeminista, open social band project, in Lavapiés, the historical district of Madrid.
In 2019 in Madrid she gives birth to Hio (hyperintergalacticorchestra).
From 2020 with Maria Luisa Usai begins the investigation for the staging of Signore – mia madre nel ’68 non c’era e se non c’era non se ne è accorta and with Valeria Sturba (Opopoioooo) begins the hatching of the third disc of OU. In 2021 takes shape in Madrid El soplo, an interdisciplinary show with the spanish director Laura Suárez and the performer Marilena Muratori.