Gerardo Balestrieri
The Best of

Discovering new songwriters. By chance. Without meaning to.

And so I also discovered Gerardo Balestrieri, born in 1971, with twelve albums to his name, almost all published by Interbeat, the quintessential niche label that also released the new works of Flavio Giurato.

The opportunity to meet him in person was at one of his concerts in an association in Torre del Greco, Brandito's, where the singer-songwriter presented about fifteen pieces from his last fifteen years of activity.

At the end, there was the possibility to purchase the CDs, so I chose the latest release, The Best of, year 2023, the summary, in eighteen songs plus a ghost track, of fifteen years of studio and live activity. Naturally, I didn't miss the chance to have it autographed.

To sum up Gerardo Balestrieri in a few words, his genre can be defined as a jazz/swing in the style of Paolo Conte, but all seasoned with the artist's touch of originality, who has been living in Venice for several years now.

As for the Best of, I believe it is the first work to listen to for anyone wanting to approach the singer-songwriter, and then perhaps delve into his previous albums.

Opening the album is Saria, "a song of love and wine," followed by Rouen, "an encounter outside the Café" and also the birthplace of Gustave Flaubert. It continues with Dimmelo, "a bit of a sciuepps twist" and La canzone delle ossa, "a story of bootleg records etched on X-ray films."

The album continues with Dancing, from 2022, described by the author as "a summer pop hit," and Mia amada, "a gypsy story of abandonment."

Then there's space for an adaptation of Boris Vian in Italian, La giostrina del progresso; Pernilla, a story of a woman-horse; and Il gusto nel niente e nel sorridere, Gerardo's most famous song, here revisited in a more intimate version serving as an interlude between the first and second parts.

The second part of the collection opens with L'anima del vino, the only unreleased track, an Italian adaptation of L'ame du vin, proposed as the 19th ghost track at the end of the album.

Il blues del putagé talks about how at the end of a love, the only thing that can warm us is a stove, while Vento e blu in piazza San Marco talks about Venice during the pandemic time.

Orchestra parlante is "a first 20th-century swing," L'étrangère and Son snob are a diptych, of which the first is a tribute and the second an adaptation.

Then comes Canzone nascosta, which gave the title to one of Gerardo's albums, and the closure entrusted to two songs from the concept album dedicated to Corto Maltese, "Canzoni dal mare salato": La favola di Venezia and Rasputin, the latter also performed yesterday at Brandito's.

My rating for this new discovery is three and a half stars.