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PAOLO CONTE, Biography

Born in Asti on 6th January 1937. His lifelong passions for American jazz and the visual arts date right back to his schooldays. His performing career began as vibraphone player in local and touring bands (Saint Vincent Jazz Festival), with occasional foreign trips (3rd place in the Oslo International 'Quiz').

Songwriter started spontaneously, almost instinctively: with his brother Giorgio and then alone he would write songs inspired by books, films, and the imaginative development of actual experience.

Then suddenly in the second half of the 1960s his compositions began to be taken up by popular singers. For the first time the public heard these strange, unusual songs: 'La coppia più bella del mondo' (sung by Adriano Celentano), 'Insieme a te non ci sto più' (Caterina Caselli), 'Tripoli '69' (Patty Pravo), 'Messico e nuvole' (Enzo Jannacci), 'Genova per noi' and 'Onda su onda' (Bruno Lauzi), and many others.

In 1974, Paolo Conte begins his own recording career with his first album, PAOLO CONTE and the public heard for the first time that languid voice, nonchalantly walking a tightrope of melody, narrating poetic fragments of brief encounters, sudden enthusiasms, nostalgic recollection. A year later, a second LP was released (also called PAOLO CONTE) with another collection of songs in the same vein. With these two album Paolo Conte had made his public debut as singer-songwriter.

Widespread public recognition began in 1979 with UN GELATO AL LIMON; the next album, PARIS MILONGA, was even presented two years later (1981) at a special Conte Day organized by the Club Tenco at San Remo.

1982 saw the issue of APPUNTI DI VIAGGIO, a collection of songs that provided a rich repertoire of concert songs. Conte, seeing that has now 'arrived', chooses this moment to think carefully about his next move.

He comes back into the limelight again in 1984 with his first CGD recording, an album with the familiar title of PAOLO CONTE. The media are interested, the album receives enthusiastic reviews. Meanwhile, after successful concerts at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, Paolo is acclaimed in France. This tour ends in Italy with all concerts sold out, the enthusiastic atmosphere captured on a double live album, CONCERTI.

1987 brings the double album AGUAPLANO with twenty-one songs revealing new aspects of his artistic range. Paolo then began a series of long tours abroad: two tours of Canada, five in France (three weeks at the Olympia in Paris), two tours of Holland (where he is presented with a gold disk and a platinum disk), two tours of Germany, and concerts in Belgium, Austria, Greece and Spain, not to mention two nights at New York's temple of jazz, the historic Blue Note Club. He also made appearances at many festivals: Montreux, Montreal, Cagliari, Juan les Pins, Nancy etc.

After the 'Aguaplano' tour he decided to take it easy for a bit. To satisfy public interest, a new live album, LIVE, was released, recorded at the Spectrum in Montreal, and a video recorded at Amsterdam's Theâtre Carré.

Two years later, in November 1990, a new album appeared, PAROLE D'AMORE SCRITTE A MACCHINA, new in the sense of consisting of recently-composed songs, but also in the sense of revealing a new side of Paolo Conte, a new musical approach. An important album, therefore, which repays careful listening.

The following album, NOVECENTO (October 1992), marks a return to a more familiar style-vintage Conte, in fact. The backing singers and electronic experimentations of 'Parole d'amore' have been left aside in favour of a splendid band capable of suggestive echoes of jazz and musicals as commentaries on Conte's famous rhythms, melodies, and lyrics: elegant, seductive or even drunken rhythms, lurching into hot jazz, or bar-room tangos; music of memories that are half true, half dreams; poetic fragments of colors, images and fantasies. The flow of such tracks as 'Gong-Oh', 'Novecento' and 'I giardini pensili hanno fatto il loro tempo' have all the air of inspired and careful composition and experimentation. Having worked alone on the pieces for six months of pre-production, Conte then recorded the album over a summer. Each member of the 10-musician band was carefully chosen by Conte himself, preference being given to talented youngsters.

The importance of Conte's concert performances is shown by the double album CONCERTI in 1985 and PAOLO CONTE LIVE in 1988, as well as two videotapes NEL CUORE DI AMSTERDAM (1989) and LIVE IN MONTREUX (1991), then by his 19-track CD called TOURNEE, a selection of performances recorded live in 1991, 1992 and 1993.

The material was selected from recordings at a long series of concerts including three tours of Germany, Holland, France, Italy, Belgium, Austria, with odd concerts in Spain and England and nine weeks in Paris at the Olympia and at the Théâtre des Champs Elysées.

The album also includes three previously-unreleased tracks: 'Bye Music' (used to close concerts in 1992), 'Ouverture alla russa' (used to open concerts in 1993), and 'Reveries' (a new song presented once in Holland, with french lyrics, performed for the pleasure of giving a first public airing to a recently-written song).

The new Studio album finally arrives in autumn 1995, fruit of long hours of study, preparation and infinite care, working in close collaboration with a basic team of bassist Jino Touche, percussionist Daniele di Gregorio, and accordionist and player of all instruments Massimo Pitzianti with contributions on individual tracks from other members of the band. The album, UNA FACCIA IN PRESTITO, is his most mature to date. There are still the typical elements of the 'Paolo Conte song', however, that never cease to captivate the listener: the 'plebeian grace' of the music, his taste for pastiche of various styles and periods, the evident pleasure gained from creating fantastic musical texts accompanied by a witty language of unpredictable invention, like the pidgin of 'Sijmadicandhapajiee', or the 'Spanish' of 'Danson metropoli' and 'Vita da sosia'.

It's a music that 'plays everything and nothing, Like music in music' in the words of 'Elisir': 'Where everything is nothing, Like dust on dust'. Paolo Conte lets himself go with the freewheeling fun of 'Quadrille', then removes the mask to give us the moving confessions of 'Giù le carte' and 'Una faccia in prestito'. He even finds room for a nostalgic 'Orazione d'onore per il Teatro Alfieri di Asti chiuso da tempo', in which he tells us about himself and his roots, weaving as ever a moire fabric of reality and dreams, using musical alchemy to transmute nostalgia and deep feeling into a sardonic smile.

Extracted from www.concerto.net

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