Giovanni Allevi
No Concept

Publishing a CD in 200x already has its damned complications. Publishing it, then, with a nice label underneath that tells us in cold characters 'PIANO SOLO' is equivalent to giving a little speech to the buyer.

It’s like saying: "Listen, I know that two shelves ahead you have the best of the best in electronics, the finest rock mastered in New York, the most ear-splitting Metal, the most commercial pop. But I like to caress a black-and-white beast weighing some good quintals, I can't help it, I like it and I do it. That's how I am; I'm a long-haired guy who presses keys and hasn't wanted to know anything about drums, guitars, and basses. But I won't stay silent, I have something to say. Buy me, come on."
I believe, more or less, this is what Giovanni Allevi wanted to tell a potential buyer in a crowded music store in some hypermarket on a Saturday afternoon. At least that's what his bushy silhouette on the CD's cover told me when I bought it in a crowded hypermarket on a Saturday afternoon.

I had already heard his name. I understood later that I had also heard his music, in some BMW commercial. I did some research.

Giovanni Allevi looks pubescent even though he's approaching forty. He’s someone who, not without a good dose of pride, claims to have traveled the world, to have conquered the Blue Note with one phone call, to be a philosopher of music, to be the Mozart of the 2000s; when it comes to presentations, he's no joke. Yet I imagine telling his mom: "Mom, I want to be a pianist and make it big in the musical world" probably worried his parents a bit. But he made it; he conquered a small market island, semi-empty, occupied only by his co-tenant Einaudi, and got his satisfactions in such a painfully saturated market as the Italian one. Music aside, he deserves applause just for that.

No Concept arises from ideas. His music springs from wanting to let out these ideas. The title thus tells us something else, it tells us that these ideas have no logical thread, they are not connected, and whoever connects them is stupid.

The only relationship must be between them and the creator, individually, with a technique that’s smooth, calm, and relaxing enough.

Because producing a PIANO SOLO album, and wanting to offer one's own world as well, requires paying a lot of attention to composition, always teetering between new age and background chamber music. The relaxing-enough comes from the fact that, like it or not, forty-five minutes of piano certainly won't "crank you up" or "energize you" like good old Rock can. Allevi thus places the right accents on the right parts, and what comes out are songs. True ones. With a pop scheme that almost makes you smile when related to the genre, comprising of Introduction, Verse, Chorus, Variation, and so on, and with a rhythm almost catchy that I’ve found myself and have heard others whistle more than once.

The tracks are thirteen, the contaminations two thousand. Allevi has studied and you can tell, the good dose of classical is not missing, but the soul always remains a lively, optimistic jazz. And jazz, that you can't really learn anywhere. You either are born with it or live without it.

Therefore, Allevi the philosopher's world of Ideas is sometimes sad, sometimes cheerful, but always with a smiling ending, whether it be a beat or a song.

'Go with the flow' happily slides through the eardrums, sweet, delicate. It’s the first, a worthy opening to the album, a song that leaves nothing, like all others by Allevi. They arrive, you hear them, but then they go away. If you think about it, only a handful of notes come to mind, well-ordered, but they no longer say anything to you, they've lost their true order of creation, their intent. No longer ideas, but notes.
Third comes 'Come sei veramente'. Musical background of a commercial. Of a car. Beautiful but certainly doesn't deserve a song. Only a song can say who someone truly is, words could never do it, they never could. Music has done it, other times, now it has repeated itself.

Maybe it was because I was tired, maybe because I was depressed, but in one June evening, one with the window open, with the whole world outside making noise and me alone inside, it came. I cried. There were absolutely no preconditions, the conditions, but some absurd combination of programmed keys pressed that made two large, warm tears fall. It came. Allevi’s idea planted itself before me instantly, slipping away at the end of execution. It told me who I really was. Without ifs and buts. As art may try to do, but only music can achieve.

And so is the album. They are notes, thirteen, on keys, eighty-eight. Some of them start to play with some strange and natural mechanism inside us. Some others don’t care about us, about Allevi, or about the world. They just sit there. Some others could well have stayed at home.

I gave four to an album that perhaps didn't deserve it. But Allevi can touch and not touch, it’s an entirely random combination, beyond technique and everything else. I was slapped full in the face by some impertinent vibration of the aforementioned black-and-white beast. If only I were slapped often like that. And I gave four. Many may perhaps not be touched, may not provide the right key, for whatever reason, whatever it may be. And they will tell me I’m an idiot.

But I got my slap.