DUE RADICI (Two Roots) From Italy to England and back, travelling through the Music of a life. A journey through the feelings, a journey through space and time.
A program in which North and South, Italian and English music are united, as they are united in me, born from a mother from Napels and a father who took flight from the green fields of Coventry. Due Radici tells the story of a sentimental journey, a journey through space and time. Not just a geographical space, but a space of the mind, of someone that today is not that young anymore, but who realizes every day how much beauty life is still giving him, by giving him music. This program is certainly autobiographical, pairing Neapolitan esprit to that quintessentially English reserve, but it is also a new chapter in the book that tells of an old friendship.
I got to know Stefano in 1979, when we were both students of music at the University of Bologna. We have shared our studies and difficulties, houses and occasions. And music, almost from the very beginning. To him and a few others I owe the spur that launched me towards the universe of music, to the exploration of song, towards the discovery of poets and composers that were still unknown to most. To the roads we travelled, to the innumerous encounters that marked the course of my listening and studying, this program is dedicated. A program in which Monteverdi goes hand in hand with Tromboncino, or the music of Pino Daniele, and where Purcell effortlessly enters into dialogue with Steve Winwood or the words of Nick Drake, who died too young, but whose existence has left an indelible mark on the music of the past forty years.
In Due Radici I sing of life and death, of love and solitude, I sing of laughter and tears: in short, of the contrasts within the human soul. This program does not want to be an anthology of arbitrary pieces, but follows a single precise theme: the quest of your own roots, as tokens of belonging to the place most dear to your heart; the feeling of being part of something intimately and with passion. Music has no boundaries, they say. So let us try to make music in liberty, taking the pleasure in doing so as our lead, without the limitations imposed by chronology, but by simply tasting every word of these songs that move us time and again. Because we are alive.
