Gianmaria Testa
5 Questions

"I'm just someone who occasionally writes a song"

About a month ago, I attended a concert by Gianmaria Testa in Stintino, a small fishing village in the northwest of Sardinia. After the concert, I had the chance to exchange a few words with him and asked if a brief interview via email was possible. Yes, it was possible. So, here is the interview, which, despite its brevity, manages to highlight Gianmaria's personality.

1. Hi Gianmaria, where are you at the moment and what are you currently working on?
I'm at home. The veil of October has arrived on the hills, but so have the colors of the harvest. They say this year's harvest will be good... Today, I start rehearsals for "Chisciotte e gli invincibili," a project by Erri de Luca with Gabriele Mirabassi and Erri de Luca himself. As with every start of rehearsals, I am curious and a bit uneasy. Let's hope we do justice to Erri's text, which is very interesting.

2. In your albums and concerts, you collaborate with many jazz musicians. What is your relationship with this musical genre?
My relationship with jazz is that of a listener, not even a very erudite one, but I've always thought of jazz as one of the great revolutions of the twentieth century. In Italy, we're fortunate to have a lot of excellent jazz musicians who have been willing to explore musical paths that, not long ago, were considered parallel. And naturally, they brought to these paths their great expressive freedom and talent. For me, it has been, and still is, an opportunity to learn, aside from being a fortune.

3. When did you realize you would become a singer-songwriter?I've never really thought of myself as a singer-songwriter. I'm someone who occasionally writes a song because I have something to say, and this something cannot be expressed in any other way.

4. What have been your main influences?
It's very difficult to summarize a life of things heard, read, or experienced. I can say that the first great musical emotion I recall dates back to when I was six or seven years old and was admitted to the parish choir to sing Mozart's Ave Verum. On that occasion, I became aware in a completely childish and unconscious way of the power of music and singing, especially. From that moment on, the list would be long and, I believe, useless; nor could I explain why, at a certain point, I felt the need to use the song as a means of communication.

5. In your being a musician, there are not only albums and concerts but also complex projects such as the very entertaining show "Guarda che Luna" with the Banda Osiris, Enrico Rava, Stefano Bollani, Enzo Pietropaoli, and the tribute to Leo Ferrè with Paolo Fresu and the E.S.P. Trio, the show Rossiintesta with Paolo Rossi, and the artistic partnership with the guitarist/poet Pier Maria Giovannone, whose poems you often read at your concerts. Where and how do these collaborations originate?
The collaborations originate like encounters. Sometimes you are invited to participate in a project (Guarda che luna!, Homage to Leo Ferrè) because you are deemed suitable for the task, in other cases, it is the personal encounter that sparks the desire to create something together (Rossintesta, Chisciotte e gli invincibili, Pier Mario Giovannone). As we know, it's not always easy to combine individualities, and not always does the sum give the desired result. For this reason, I consider the human bond that is created among the various protagonists of a project as one of the fundamental conditions for the continuation of the work. And in this bond lies all the pleasure and willingness to collaborate.

6. To close this brief interview, would you tell us the title of an album you love particularly and why?
Choosing just one album is difficult. Normally, at least a dozen are allowed on the deserted island or among the things to save from the flood... but I'll say "Por una cancion" by Paco Ibanez. Paco Ibanez is a Catalan and Basque singer who lived in France for a long time during the Franco regime. His entire work consists of setting to music some of the most beautiful poems by authors like Garcia Lorca, Antonio Machado, José Agustín Goytisolo. His albums (and this one in particular) have the complex simplicity of beautiful things. Once I asked him if the time hadn't finally come for him to write an original text. He replied: with all the good that has been written by poets, it seems truly useless to add anything...