Benedetta Ricci
Four decades of jazz, shelved floor to ceiling in a Milanese apartment where every record has been played at least twice.
Benedetta bought her first record at seventeen, from a shop near the conservatory that no longer exists. Forty years later the collection has grown to fill an entire wall of her apartment, arranged not alphabetically but by mood — a system only she can navigate, and navigate she does, unerringly.
She is dismissive of the idea that a record is an investment. "A record you do not play is just furniture," she says. Every one of her four thousand albums has been heard, most of them many times over, and she can tell you where she was when she first played the ones that matter.
Her advice to younger collectors is disarmingly simple: buy what moves you, play it until you understand it, and never apologise for what you love.