Composizioni is the second album by Giovanni Allevi. It was released in 2003 on the Soleluna label, like the first album.

The press received the release like this:

La Stampa (5 October 2003)
“An album with a European feel, which rather than jazz, has absorbed the classical and avant garde and in many aspects recalls the minimalism of a Mertens or Nyman.” Luca Castelli

La Repubblica (6 October 2003)
“Giovanni Allevi is not exactly a jazzman, he is more of a complete artiste, curious and omnivorous, able to encompass – with his piano keyboard – classical music and pop, to then improvise like a true virtuoso who knows no bounds.” Enzo Gentile

Musica&Dischi (January 2004)
“His “compositions” escape the rules of what has already been determined, they are soundtracks for cerebral films, the creation of meta-linguistic games. At times the classical concert approach appears to dominate, thanks to a carefully structured interlaying of sound, but this is just almost imperceptible changes in register in an album which actually moves decisively towards being pleasant – it is beautiful and easy, but not simplistic: but the beauty really lies in finding the key to lightness even when the mood is darker.” O.R.

GIOVANNI ALLEVI TALKS ABOUT “COMPOSIZIONI”

“I am listening to my new album Composizioni: there is a central, mysterious core which I can’t understand, a warm centre around which all the tunes converge, a direction that the music shows me, but which hides itself.
Then, we can argue, analyse, dissect and compare, but the essence, the core, is somewhere else, close but fleeting.
That is marvellous. It is the same feeling I have towards life!
Composizioni could not have happened, but it did: it was coughed up, an uncomfortable guest who wanted to be loved.
It is a seed brought to life which very slowly begins to create changes.
If you are reading these lines it means that the Composizioni CD has been released, which means that today’s society is still able to create a small poetic miracle, and that is a beautiful piece of news, not just for me, but for all those crazy and introverted artists who need solitude as they sit on the tram”.

“I wrote nearly all of “No Concept” when I was living in Harlem: I wanted to get in touch with the very blunt poetry produced by the new forces in New York’s artistic scene. I went to America to distance myself from the constraints of the European tradition, to move away from its history and look at it through fresh eyes.”

After the first two albums “13 Dita” (“13 Fingers”, 1997) and “Composizioni” (“Compositions”, 2003), produced by Lorenzo Jovanotti, with “No Concept” Giovanni Allevi continues to reinterpret the European classical tradition opening it to new pop and contemporary tendencies.

With this album, the pianist and composer arrived at a major label, Sony Music, who he still works with.

GIOVANNI ALLEVI TALKS ABOUT “NO CONCEPT”

“No Concept” was created in those nights, strolling along warm pavements, with my instincts primed to capture any emotion, while my fingers trembled with all the theoretical practice I had absorbed.
“No Concept” is a rejection of a conceptualism at all costs, which denies creativity when this has the vague and pleasant feeling of memory.
My musical instrument could certainly be called contemporary classical music, but in the simple sense that it is music of today: the music of a composer who wants to interpret the age he lives in, as all composers have done before him. And all this without ties or superstructure.
“No Concept” means following one’s own inspiration, and is an invitation to do so at all times in life!”
– Giovanni Allevi

“13 Dita”, with 15 compositions for unaccompanied piano, was released on 12 September 1997 for the Soleluna label.

GIOVANNI ALLEVI and JOVANOTTI DESCRIBE “13 DITA”

Giovanni’s description of “13 Dita”:

“The CD “13 Dita” is the decisive turning point of my life: before its release I was happy in a small provincial town, I performed in concerts of classical music and I wrote for the piano without any idea of what recording a CD meant or what it was to be a composer, to breathe contemporaneity or to live of creativity.
Everything happened unexpectedly: meeting Jovanotti, spending three days in a recording studio in Milan, the smell of the piano of my dreams, the wooden floor of the studio, the live performance at the PalaEur and at the Forum; and that’s without talking of the emotion of the release and the knowledge that something of mine was set free in the world. After “13 Dita” I was changed: destiny made me “pick up and go”, to constantly travel, to live on a razor’s edge, attentive to what art communicates and to its reason of being, committed to always write new, fresh, lively and modern music.”

Jovanotti, founder of the Soleluna label and the album’s producer, says of “13 Dita”:
“One day Saturnino told me about a pianist who had given him a tape of pieces written for an unaccompanied grand piano. As I always like to discover new musicians to feature in my albums and to take on tour, I listened to that tape and had my first “Giovanni Allevi experience”. I loved the fact that here was a twenty-two-year-old musician who had no ambition to play in a fashionable band, or to show off his improvisation skills or his ability to easily sweep from a jazz solo to a funky piece and then to a pop accompaniment, but instead wanted to play his own music, which he had composed, and that he would accept no compromise. At the start of my concert at the PalaEur in Rome, Giovanni Allevi climbed onto the stage in front of twelve thousand people who were expecting something totally different, and played for twenty minutes on his own with his grand piano. There I received confirmation that you cannot argue against quality, sill and genuine feelings. The public went mad over him. He had managed to take them on a trip, to make them experience new sensations, just as he had with me the first time I heard him. I don’t know what kind of music Giovanni Allevi plays. I don’t know if it is called contemporary classical music or something else, and actually, I really don’t care. For me, this album is pure adrenaline, with hormonal explosions, stories of sex and masturbation, happiness and love, stories of years spent listening to the great musicians and studying their work, mastering technique so that imagination could put it at its service. This is a musician and his music, with nothing in between. He is somebody using his hands on the piano, where there is piano and there is forte.
Happy listening.”
Jovanotti

“Joy” includes 12 previously unreleased pieces recorded in August 2006 (10 hours a day, for 5 days) after the end of a long and intense tour in which Giovanni Allevi presented “No Concept”, his previous work, travelling around the world including Italy, the USA (where he played several times at the Blue Note in New York), Northern Europe, China and Hong Kong, earning an extraordinary response from the public.

GIOVANNI ALLEVI TALKS ABOUT “JOY”

“I am seeing the city through this strange window. I have never been inside an ambulance before. A Red Cross volunteer holds my hand on my shoulder and says that I have to keep calm because we are not far from the hospital.
Perhaps it came about because there was too much joy, the great emotion or accumulated tension, so that today – coming back from the tour in China – I started falling apart on the pavement in front of my home.
They are saying it could be a panic attack, or a heart condition, and to my fearful brain it seems possible I won’t make it through the next 10 minutes.
I reflect on how beautiful the sky is, the traffic, daily life or just being alive.
All those smiles I haven’t yet given, all the emotions I haven’t yet experienced, how many times I have darkened my dreams with the ghosts of fear…
If I should get out of here alive, I will sing with music about the joy of living every moment, whether beautiful or ugly, whatever situation I am in. JOY”

Ten contemporary classical music compositions, lasting over fifty minutes, which promise to be “revolutionary”.
The album has been made with the much-valued assistance of the prestigious “I Virtuosi Italiani” (“The Italian Virtuosi”) Symphony Orchestra, with Giovanni in centre stage as composer, pianist and conductor.
“I am carried away by the music, and stop trying to resist. Fragile and emotional, I look at the world with a child’s heart. It is to this point of naive and delightful fascination that my evolution has taken me.”

GIOVANNI ALLEVI TALKS ABOUT “EVOLUTION”

Evolution is how my music inevitably evolves, and – at the same time – an arrival at a new stage of emotion.
At a precise moment the music which knocks at my head began to take on the shape and timbre of a symphony orchestra, and I, completely devoted to music – faithfully transcribed it into a score, just as it came to me, without even being able to choose. This continuous hard work has taken me four years, often causing me problems in relationships, because the music in my head just doesn’t let up, not even during solo recitals.
Following the music with my head and heart has created a situation in which anxiety and worry, which by now constantly inhabit my thoughts, can find their rightful place in the perception that I have of myself, transforming negative sensations into a deep joy in existence.
My Evolution takes me back to the spellbound little boy I used to be, and since my music has no words or glossary notes, it makes it possible that this “reverse” evolutionary path can be shared by everybody.
It so happens that the “Rebel Angel” that all of us has inside, when these notes come out, can take flight, freeing itself of the ties to a daily mundanity which slyly makes us forget about our wings; just as our heart is struck by the powerful sound of “Foglie di Beslan” (“The Leaves of Beslan”), provided that all resistance is abandoned and we make ourselves emotionally vulnerable to the music.
The evolution of the little boy reaches a peak in “300 Anelli” (“300 Rings”) a “science fiction fairy tale”, which is both the most complicated and simple of the tunes.
“EVOLUTION” is an act of bravery for someone who decisively opts for the present and the future, rather than living protected by the static complacency of a glorious past. I am aware and conscious of the fact that we now have new musical elements, which were inconceivable until the last century, and which nobody before our time had ever experienced. So it is for contemporary composers to ensure that our times can be interpreted through its art, just as all “the greats” of the past have interpreted “their own time”.
The music of “EVOLUTION” follows an idealised new beauty, which can be appreciated by everybody, which rises out of the ashes of the linguistic dissolution of the twelve-tone scale and of atonality with the use, in symphonic language, of rhythmic and melodic elements from our own times.
The symphony orchestra is the star of “EVOLUTION”, expressing itself in its multitudinous qualities of timbre, in intertwined rhythms and in its very varied counterpoint. In “EVOLUTION” the orchestra does not throw in the towel. It is not in thrall to pop music, but – with a great effort in technique ­– tests the boundaries of a new kind of Contemporary Classical Music. Using new vocabulary, it echoes traditional values, without adding instruments and technology which would be historically inappropriate. In “EVOLUTION” the Symphony Orchestra conquers the present using only its own strength as a “complex acoustic tool”.
The music of “EVOLUTION” is “sophisticated” because it cannot do without the complexity of the written word and the academic talents of its performers, but – since our age is searching for collective maturity – it is very probable that a lot of people will be able to appreciate it and feel that its “pop” feel takes it close to generally accepted sounds.
What the music from “EVOLUTION” is not (by Giovanni Allevi)
This is not “film music”, since it has emerged from the bravely-accepted need to be unrelated to any extra-musical element (above all film pictures, or narrative or descriptive contents). Even though it is very probable that, once it has been created, it can take on a wide range of shapes, with a life of their own, and in the future can move down paths which cannot be predicted. But – originally – the music from “EVOLUTION” finds its raison d’etre within itself, and has no need of anything else to become strong. It is music, plain and simple.
It is not “minimalistic” music, because it does not go in for excessive repetition, while it is the expression of a continuing internal change. Minimalism, originally from the USA, is the trend which is most strongly echoed in “EVOLUTION”, since it is the last musical world from which it distances itself and then strongly reasserts a European melodic and compositional style.
It is not New Age music, because it does not seek serenity, but finds its own driving force in conflict, in irregular rhythms and strong internal tension.
It is not “contaminated” or “crossover” music, since the horizontal structure of its language does not allow for the proximity of different genres, although it brings home the strength and compositional development of the musical ideas, following the patterns of sophisticated European music.
What is the music of “EVOLUTION” (by Giovanni Allevi)
Evolution
It is new Classical Contemporary Music, which using instruments from the classical tradition – its writing style and its symphony – captures a modern, fresh and new feel.
The typical features of contemporary music, which are not envisaged in the pre-existing symphonic vocabulary, are primarily evident in the rhythm (“300 anelli” – “300 rings” part II), in the dynamic and percussive strength of the lower ranges (“A perfect day”) while the romantic streak and melodic intensity (“Foglie di Beslan”, “Angelo ribelle” and “300 anelli” part I [“The Leaves of Beslan”, “Rebel Angel” and “300 rings”]) have purely Italian and European roots.
The orchestral score is in counterpoint (in “Whisper”, in the playful multiple rhythms of “Keep moving” or in “Corale” [“Chorus”], which has five voices).
This is because “EVOLUTION” favours the multifaceted breakdown of musical language, with its countless rhythmic links, and looks for a sense of the beautiful in the tri-dimensionality of the melodic presentation, as it benefits from great varieties of mood. Listening to “EVOLUTION” is consequently a source of mental, rather than emotional, pleasure.
The music in “EVOLUTION” is new, with a new proposal, through novel movements, of the values of the past, because one cannot say anything of meaning about the future if our historical background is not completely understood. The new is the fruit of evolution and not of drastic revolution.
The music of “EVOLUTION” achieves serenity going through conflict and tension, reaching a feeling of inebriation through virtuoso force and rhythmic irregularity. The anxiety doesn’t disappear, but the music surrounds and overcomes it, turning it into passion and energy. It is emotional music.
“EVOLUTION” is a very ambitious project: it seeks to bring back the centrality of musical expression to Italy, after the Germanic twelve-tone colonisation in the twentieth century and the American minimalist hegemony. It is the hope that innate Italian and European musical talent can resist the everyday banalisation of ideas, which is where the world seems to be heading.
With “EVOLUTION” the contemporary composer of pure music once again has a role that is recognised by society, since his music is a bridge straight to the spirit of the age itself.

“Allevi & All Stars Orchestra – Verona Arena” is the story of an unforgettable night of music and emotion, on 1 September 2009, in the Arena of Verona where 10 thousand spectators gathered to hear Giovanni Allevi and the All Stars Orchestra in a concert which managed to fully convey the many facets of his talent as a composer, a pianist and a conductor.

GIOVANNI ALLEVI DESCRIBES “Allevi & All Stars Orchestra”

“Only dreams are true, only Emotion, Irreverence, and burning Passion have consequences, leave a mark. This is the story of a crazy enterprise! The most prestigious orchestras of the world gathered in a single Symphony Orchestra to play together the music of our time. London, Tokyo, Tel Aviv, Saint Petersburg, Munich, Buenos Aires, New York. For one night the heart of modern Classical Music was the Arena of Verona. It was fantastic!”
For one exclusive night, the prestigious Arena of Verona welcomed 87 musicians from the most important symphony orchestras of the world: the London Symphony Orchestra, the Russian Philharmonic from Moscow, the Kioi Sinfonietta from Tokyo, the Bayerischer Rundfunk from Munich, the Haifa Symphony Orchestra from Tel Aviv, the Julliard School of New York, the Prime Philharmonic Orchestra of Seoul and the Orchestra of the Teatro Colon in Buenos Aires.
Italian musicians shared the stage with the best international orchestras: I Virtuoisi Italiani and the Orchestra della Fondazione Arena di Verona.

Video

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGr9XW7usdc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yp7e4x4dQCI

“ALIEN is the most gentle, wild and passionate album my fingers have produced. I let music flow without any limits, towards a complex construction where compositional technique is always at the service of expression”.

“ALIEN” is the title of new piano pieces by Giovanni Allevi, produced by Bizart and distributed by Sony Music.
The album was recorded at the prestigious RSI – Radiotelevisione Svizzera di Lingua Italiana (Swiss broadcasting organisation in Italian) – auditorium in Lugano, a Mecca for classical music where the greatest artists have performed, from Igor Stravinsky to Martha Argerich.

Giovanni Allevi describes the album “ALIEN”

“The compositions included in my latest album were born over several years from rhythmic or melodic ideas which were playing in my head, never leaving me. I need to give shape to this music which floated through all moments of my life, from the daily routine for the rare days when I am home, to the hectic and highly emotional times during performances in long tours. Yet every fragment had a precise identity whose nature I had to address in order to be able to utilise it. It has created what may be my most complex album, where musical research is aimed at the dilation of forms and execution tends towards reaching obsessive purity of sound. I felt the need to use the sonata form, a historic musical form which is still relevant, which can better organise melodic and rhythmic content which have been changed by modern times.

I chose to name this new musical project “ALIEN”, born far from market requests, far from demands from recording companies, but close to those who want to see beyond what we are told, beyond the thoughtless and unhappy universe which seems to collapse unto us all the time. It is only through the eyes of Music that we can see reality, “see beyond”. So “ALIEN” is an album full of energy, of impassioned vitality, dense and impetuous like life which we must grasp and which can only seize if we manage to remove our prejudices and those of the people surrounding us. If we consider the essence of things, if we learn to rediscover those who surround us as being special, if we learn to observe the world around us without taking anything for granted.

“ALIEN” is an expression of love towards what is real, not the quest for a parallel universe, the desire to run away from the difficulties of the present, but the conviction that here and now is the only and the best of possible worlds, and that a large part of what we experience in our lives depends on us and our choices.
At this moment in time, “ALIEN” portrays me better than any other adjective: it describes the absolute need to stay true to myself. Paradoxically, being oneself and wanting with all one’s might to continue to be so can seem an “alien” choice in this world full of assumptions and prejudices, overloaded with definitions and information. For this I felt the need to repeat that, sometimes, feeling inadequate, mocked by a performance-driven and powerful reality, can be the inalienable desire to remain in touch with one’s very essence: fragile, delicate, light, but coherent with itself and, because of this, unassailable.”

Video

Music by Giovanni Allevi

With the Teatro Carlo Felice of Genoa Symphony Orchestra
Conductor and pianist: Giovanni Allevi
Violin soloist: Mariusz Patyra

Recorded at the Teatro Carlo Felice of Genoa by Max Gardini for Groove Factory during July and August 2012
Executive production and management: Nada Bernardo for Bizart srl

Tracklist
Fantasia concertante Piano and Orchestra
01. “Sunrise”
02. “Mandela”
03. “Symphony of life”
04. “Elevazione”
05. “Heart of snow”
La danza della strega (The Dance of the Witch)/ Concerto for Violin and Orchestra
06. Mosso
07. Adagio
08. Allegro con slancio

“I like to think that Sunrise is the dawn of a new day.
We are now surrounded by uncertainty, but we mustn’t stop dreaming of a better world.
I would like these notes to give hope to all and to give people courage to walk down new roads.
Music, my Capricious Witch, has returned with the moving sound of the violin, the piano and the orchestra.
Music is my revival.
After a long and difficult period, musical notes, joy and enthusiasm have come back to overwhelm me like a waterfall.
Now I only want these notes to be close to the hearts of people, to encourage them to overcome dark times, to rediscover the light that shines within us all”
Giovanni Allevi

Video

Four years after the Platinum Album “Alien” and after the symphonic experience of “Sunrise” with the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra in F minor, Giovanni Allevi returns to the unaccompanied piano for a new project with a title which is a statement of love for existence: “LOVE”, a journey in the soul to rediscover love for the world.

The artist’s ninth studio album, with the pre-released singles “My Family” and “Loving You”, is the latest step in the human and artistic growth of the composer, pianist and conductor who has already won many awards during his career which spans twenty years.
Recorded at the SAE Institute in Milan, a leading-edge university centre for audio-video production in Europe, the album is the state-of-the-art for piano recording, with perfect balance between the acoustics of the room, the preparation of the piano and its careful placement for a natural microphone recording. “A soft yet powerful sound, which is never harsh and has a rich extension in the bass frequencies, for an extremely satisfying listening experience”, says Ian Jones, a sound engineer at the Abbey Road Studios in London were the disc was burned. LOVE has thirteen tracks, thirteen pages of a genuine, sincere and highly emotional musical diary, which talks of love in its many forms.
Love is romantic in “Loving You”, familiar in “Come with Me”, physical in “Lovers”, heart-breaking in “Asian Eyes”, sublime in “Amor Sacro”, addressed to those we are closest to in “My Family” and “La Stanza dei Giochi” (“The Playroom”), ecstatic in “Yuzen”, for simple things in “Sweetie Pie”, for those which seem more complicated in “It Doesn’t Work”, for oneself – which is also the hardest in “L’Albatros” (inspired by the poem by Baudelaire), for the more complex parts of ones personality “The Other Side of Me”, and even a cosmic desire for freedom in “Asteroid 111561” (the asteroid that NASA recently names after the composer). But “LOVE” is also and above all a declaration of love for the public which has followed him for over twenty years with constant affection. For this reason Allevi chose to have his fans with him for the final phases of the making of the album, inviting them into the recording studio, involving them personally in the music which was being created (See the photographs of this extraordinary experience).

The album will be available in two versions, CD and vinyl, as well as the digital version which is already available on the iTunes Store.

CD:
AMAZON.CO.UK
IBS.IT
FELTRINELLI
MONDADORI

LP:
AMAZON.CO.UK
IBS.IT
FELTRINELLI
MONDADORI

After the album’s release, Giovanni Allevi will resume live performances with his piano and play the new pieces of “LOVE” in a world première on 27 February at the Cadogan Hall in LONDON, opening a packed European tour which will reach Italy on 27 March in Rome before continuing round the peninsula until the end of April 2015.

CLICK HERE to see all the dates.

EQUILIBRIUM is the new recording project by Giovanni Allevi containing unpublished pieces for solo piano and piano and orchestra collected in a double CD

Equilibrium is the latest studio album containing unreleased songs by the composer Giovanni Allevi, the “prodigy of Contemporary Classical Music” (Kinéo Prize, Venice Biennale 2017).

The entire work is traversed by two musical souls who meet in an unstable equilibrium, and which have always infused the notes of the composer Allevi with an inimitable energy.
The international project sees the participation of the virtuoso American pianist Jeffrey Biegel (who boasts collaborations from Leonard Bernstein to Keith Emerson) for the recording of the composer’s first Concerto for Piano and Symphony Orchestra.
In “Equilibrium” Giovanni Allevi maintains a close relationship with his favorite instrument in all compositions for piano and string orchestra and for solo piano, while J. Biegel is at the keyboard in the “Concerto for Piano and Orchestra n.1”, under the direction of Allevi himself, after having performed it as a world premiere in the United States on August 26th.

JEFFREY BIEGEL
Jeffrey Biegel, virtuoso of the piano and connoisseur of the most important contemporary pages for piano and orchestra, in August 2017, performed in the United States in the World Premiere of Giovanni Allevi’s ‘Concerto for Piano and Orchestra’ with the Kentucky Orchestra and will be present at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan on November 15th for the concert event for the presentation of the album “Equilibrium”, recorded in Milan under the direction of Giovanni Allevi himself.

ITALIAN SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA
The Italian Symphony Orchestra was born from the fusion of the classical and lyrical experiences of some of the best Italian orchestra professors from major national theaters. The Italian Symphony Orchestra demonstrates an extraordinary versatility and knowledge of the languages ​​of both the classical and the contemporary repertoire, and under the guidance of Maestro G. Allevi from 2009 to today has made numerous tours, staging original compositions in world premiere .

The national premiere-event of “Equilibrium”, after the world premiere in America in August 2017, took place on November 15 at the Teatro dal Verme in Milan with the Italian Symphony Orchestra.
Starting from December 2017, and then continuing in 2018, “Equilibrium Tour” will touch the entire national territory, pre-sales open on ticketone.it.

Purchase link:
– EQUILIBRIUM 2 LP 180 GR

Maestro Giovanni Allevi, composer, philosopher, pianist and conductor returns with “HOPE”, a new musical project inspired by the magic of Christmas. On 15th November one of the best-loved contemporary Italian artists in the world will release his 18th album in which his unmistakable piano will be accompanied by a fantastic lineup comprising the Chorus of the Opera of Parma, the Italian Symphonic Orchestra and the Chorus of the Pueri Cantores of the Cappella Musicale at the Duomo of Milan.