Music in A Box

Corrado Neri, a young piano and composition talent, arranger and songwriter, after years of international live experience, has recorded his work for the first time. eclecticism and its energy disruptive.

Neri's classical training, combined with a continuous search for a fusion between ancient and modern, is fully expressed in the 10 tracks of his debut album, MUSIC IN A BOX?recorded at the Garibaldi Theatre of Avola (Syracuse), his home town, and published on the label Prelude.

Corrado Neri tells us: "For years, I had been looking for the right time and the right form to encapsulate in my first album the multiple faces of my activity as a composer and pianist-songwriter. Different aspects that represent what I believe must be the conception of the musician of the future: of the music without borders or genres. However, one choice was made on this record: whether it is a song, a piano piece or a poem with music, the constant is that it is still a small form, because it is the first unit of measurement I want to deal with. I consider it the most synthetic and difficult spatio-temporal-musical dimension: you need a remarkable capacity for mimesis to be able to express yourself in a few minutes".

Mirroring Neri's enthralling and virtuosic live performances as a pianist and singer are the covers he has arranged of The alarm clock, Pizzica e Old frack of Domenico Modugno, openly declaring his love for this artist.

These are complemented by some original pieces such as the brilliant waltz by Shining Waltzthe rondo by Song for Redemption and the ironic Old Bachan imaginary version of Old frack of the 18th-century composer.

The album's driving force - along with the videoclip - is the track that opens the disc, Etneainspired by Neri's long stay on Etna. Here the piano dialogues with the drum of the percussionist Alfio Antico (among the greatest interpreters of FRAME DRUM), to recreate the exchange between the constant pace of the traveller and the unpredictable rhythm of the volcano's breath, on which the voice of a young artist is grafted, asking to be volcanic again, to generate artistic magma and to be able to express it again.

The only exception to the use of the piano, the protagonist of all the pieces, is a fascinating reinterpretation of the aria from Once upon a time in the West Morricone, which here merges with theAir on the fourth string Bach, performed by Neri on an early 19th-century Sicilian organ, in which the voice of the soprano Federica Contarino transports the listener into a elsewhere indefinite.

Music in A Box vede inoltre il contributo artistico di Maxim Distefano violin, tenor Dave Monaco and the poet Lina Maria Ugolini who lends his voice for the reading of his composition The coral tinsupported by Somewhere over the Rainbowplayed by Neri in the version improvised by Keith Jarrett at La Scala in 1994.

writes Mario Luzzatto Fegiz in the liner notes of the album: "This album is a necessarily reductive example of what Corrado Neri is. He manages to combine several qualities: stage presence, versatility of repertoire, powerful voice, compositional ability, boundless love for music in all its forms. I call him an acrobatic pianist. Here you will find the sublimation of an erupting volcano in the original instrumental Etnea and the irresistible Pizzica the spirit of which is renewed in the sweeping Alarm clock. Neri does a meritorious job. Because it is precisely in the re-reading that the songs live on and perpetuate themselves. The mechanical support photographs. The re-reading gives new eternity. This disc is Neri's stylistic manifesto"..

The project is completed by a documentary-concert freely available on Corrado Neri's YouTube channel for the disc's launch period.