Giovanni Allevi
Joy

Giovanni Allevi is like this. The curly and unruly hair, the plastic-framed glasses, the casual t-shirt, the faded jeans, the Converse shoes (perhaps even a bit dirty), the smile pasted on his face, reveal a personality that's shy but not too much, reserved but not too much. The speech, with its Marche region influences, is cultured, but not too much. A balanced man, in short. One of those people who are called "eternal children", even at thirty-eight years old, like him, because he's just like that.

Giovanni Allevi is like this. When talking with him, perhaps in front of a glass of orange juice (in summer) or a mug of hot chocolate (in winter), he seems like a presence among many others, friendly, playful, a bit aloof, without too many embellishments. Just like many. The conversation slightly complicates when you are down, in the dark, with many men and women, a bit aristocratic in appearance, and he is there, up high, with a spotlight on him, in front of a black and shiny Bogendorfer, while the time reflects on a bit worn parquet. And then, you finally understand who Giovanni Allevi is. Someone like all of us, and at the same time, paradoxically, someone different from us. Surely, we are not the only ones who ponder this mysterious dilemma. Giovanni Allevi is like this: the conservatory professors must have grasped it when, long ago, as Giovanni was playing a piece, a commission member interrupted him, saying to his colleagues, "This one either copied or is the reincarnation of Brahms". The philosophy deans must have understood it for sure, standing up to applaud him and to hand him the much-desired—and deserved—diploma ("The Void in contemporary physics"), years and years ago. And naturally, it would have been understood at the Blue Note in New York: when you could hear Giovanni’s fast and nervous steps in the distance, it was clear that evening would remain imprinted on body and spirit for a very long time. The Blue Note in New York: the temple of classical music, crossed by the greatest pianists of all time, among whom was only one Italian. Actually: an Italian accompanied by a double sold-out. Giovanni Allevi. Because he is like this.

"I see the city from this strange glass. I've never been in an ambulance. A Red Cross volunteer keeps a hand on my shoulder and says I must stay calm because the hospital is nearby. Perhaps due to excessive joy, great emotion, or the tension accumulated today, returning from the tour in China, I went haywire on the sidewalk outside my house. They talk about a panic attack or a heart condition, and for my fearful mind, it's possible I won't survive the next 10 minutes. I think about how beautiful the sky is, the traffic, the daily life, or just being alive. How many smiles I haven't given, how many emotions I haven't yet experienced, how many times I've obscured my dreams behind the ghosts of fear... If I get out of here, I will sing with Music the joy of living, every beautiful or bad moment, whatever my condition might be."

Giovanni Allevi is like this. When he says something, he always promises it. Whether he makes it understood implicitly ("No Concept" of 2005, one of the best-selling Italian albums on iTunes), or explicitly (with the sentence transcribed above). Giovanni and music are one and the same, an essential symbiosis that feeds each other. Giovanni loves music, music serves Giovanni: and the relationship is immediately apparent, pardon, to the ear. Giovanni Allevi is like this. His music is defined as "contemporary classical": a classical base, artistically impeccable, but that sounds incredibly current, devoid of the serious style and baroque redundancies typical of nineteenth-century composers. Sailing between a D-flat and a treble clef, Giovanni pours all his feelings onto his phalanges, excellently mixed with love and the—extraordinarily rare—compositional freshness. A cascade of sounds, in an elegant and graceful alternation of black and white, white and black, continuous and fast flow. Giovanni is like this: in front of a piano, he initiates an intoxicating correspondence of the senses, between pop touches, classical tributes, jazz reminiscences, minimalist sprinkles. And that is why he is liked by both the fifty-year-old in a pinstripe suit and the fifteen-year-old dressed casually like him, who already imagines the scene of Giovanni sitting at the piano, focused and relaxed, with fingers rapidly moving across the keyboard, the rain pattering against the windows, a useless sheet music lying forgotten a few meters away. Because music is emotion, passion, and not a set of white and black dots joined by some bars. Giovanni Allevi is like this.

And here is the man from the Marche region who transforms his dramatic experience (the collapse outside his home) into a light, engaging song, in some points moving for its sunny sincerity, with nothing desperate or gloomy: "Panic" is a rational and sentimental composition that comes from the heart. The frenzy of "Portami Via", a light and moving nervousness that opens like a bud in spring, only to close and conclude with a sharp, yet exciting, epilogue, is the direct consequence of the previous "Panic". The album does not have a predefined reading key: the order of the songs is not random, united together they form the little story of Giovanni Allevi. And just as the sleepy and refined "Downtown" precedes the lively, joyful "Water Dance", in a whirlwind of notes, colors, and sensations (like childhood following birth, to conception, lived as a meditative moment), in the same way, the arpeggiating "Viaggio In Aereo", with slightly disturbing and incomplete tonalities harmoniously connects with the tributary work "Follow You", a concentration of melancholic comings and goings, like the faint sun of November, which often succumbs to the dark, but is not seen as a moment of sadness, as the darkness has (and will always have) its end, in the rebirth of life and the joy of living.

"Vento d'Europa", the masterpiece of the album, has a lively and oriental movement, a true breeze blowing over the green fields and barren plains, filling them with beauty. Allevi’s performance is superb, just convincingly and confidently enough, and even more. The long and reflective "L'Orologio Degli Dei", a meditation on infinity and its rational limits, accompanied by a soft touch, bordering on the celestial in some parts, is the worthy opening to the anthem "Back To Life", in which life is celebrated as a magical and unique moment, delicate and fragile, a true mirror in which everyone can reflect. And there is certainly no shortage of episodes with more cheerful and carefree tones, like "Jazzmatic", with its irregular, almost distorted piano swing, a real fun, a joy that no one refuses. Because Giovanni Allevi is like this. The slow and romantic "Il Bacio", a discovery that disturbs the soul of the subject left to the distant "Water Dance" in the fullness of childhood, is filled with sweet melancholy, with echoes of Mozart and Allevian genius. And the closure is a real cherry on the cake: "New Renaissance", a dance on pointe, a praise of the beauty of the simple and common through kind and very fast high-toned touches, often opening into stylistic refinements typical of Giovanni, a man like us and yet different from us.

An album that captures the heart of every person. Because it is direct, simple, genuine, sincere in its hidden refinement. Because it is a hymn to life, as Giovanni had promised us. Because listening to it facilitates the inexorable flow of time. Because, amid meditative and complex reflections, there's room for fun. Or rather, even for fun. But on the other hand, Giovanni Allevi is like this. Requiem.